


Trine Woes

by Quiet_Shadow



Series: The Woes Series [18]
Category: Transformers Animated (2007)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blow Jobs, Claiming, Cowgirl Position, Dubious Consent, Dubious Ethics, Dubious Science, Dubiously Consensual Blow Jobs, F/M, Hand Jobs, Handcuffs, M/M, Manipulation, Oral Sex, Past Relationship(s), Penis In Vagina Sex, Seeker Trines, Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Threesome - M/M/M, Vaginal Fingering, Woman on Top
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:47:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28479420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quiet_Shadow/pseuds/Quiet_Shadow
Summary: Why does the universe keep conspiring against Sentinel Prime? Whenever he's coming to Earth,somethingalways happens to him! This time, he has gotten kidnapped by a Starscream clone!A rather attractive Starscream clone, admittedly, and who is eyeing him like an energon goodie. So why not just... succumb to the tentation? After all, it's not as if anyone has to know... right?However, there may be more to the situation than meet the eye, the Ministry of Science has kept secrets, Jazz is cursing their luck and Jetstorm and Jetfire are in hot pursuit, intent on recoveringtheirMister Sentinel Prime...
Relationships: Jetfire | Skyfire/Jetstorm/Sentinel Prime (Transformers), Sentinel Prime/Slipstream
Series: The Woes Series [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/42909
Comments: 11
Kudos: 35





	Trine Woes

**Author's Note:**

> Happy New Year!

Sentinel Prime honestly, openly, truthfully, sincerely _hated_ Earth.

Earth, it should be noted, seemed to hate him right back.

Why else would he end up in messes whenever he set a foot on the planet? Sentinel had kept count, and it made him both furious and nervous. Getting his body _stolen by an organic_ , being _taken hostage_ by a bunch of Decepticons and _almost hit in the gearbox_ by Optimus while being used as a human-shield by said Decepticons (and no matter how much Optimus had excused himself, Sentinel couldn’t let go of the vague feeling it had been voluntary), almost getting in a couple of accident due to slippery roads,…

The list was long and humiliating and only fueled Sentinel Prime’s ire.

Personally, he wanted to blame Optimus for a lot of the misfortune that kept following him around. Although he had to privately and grudgingly admit that, as tempting as it was to blame Optimus and his pathetic, second-rate Maintenance team, logic stated that they were (most likely) innocent in the instances related to the ‘weather’ on Earth.

Just because he didn’t like organic planets didn’t meant Sentinel had skipped the lectures on them in the Academy, after all.

Anyway.

He hated Earth, and if he had had his word to say, Sentinel would never have put a foot on it ever again.

Sadly for him, he wasn’t the one who gave the orders (yet). And so he had had to head back to this dust ball with the Jettwins and Jazz, all for the sake of ‘further testing the Twins’ flying abilities in new patterns and conditions unable to be properly replicated on Cybertron’ or some pathetic pretense like that. That was at least what Jazz had been able to translate for him; Perceptor used too long words anyway, who could listen to him without feeling lost after two sentences?

He hadn’t wanted to go, really he hadn’t, but Sentinel was a good soldier. Say whatever you wanted about him (and _yes_ , he _knew_ ; what, you thought he had gotten to his position without listening to rumors and gossip in the corridors?), but he always did his duty. And if the Guilds Domesticus and Acting Magnus Rodimus wanted him to go ( _slag_ , but how had it happened? It should have been Sentinel!), then he’d grit his dental plates and he’d go.

Which brought him to his current situation, really.

He should have known something like that would happen. Something _always_ happened on Earth!

Sentinel had tried to come ready. Truly, he had! He had stocked up on cyber-sol and anti-bacterial sprays (after all, who knew what sort of metal-eating micro-organisms lived on Earth, despite Optimus’ reassurances? The mech was so gullible, they’d devour him before he knew they were here!); he had learned everything he could about Earth’s weird weather pattern and how to connect to one of those ‘weather forecast’ programs the organics ran to follow their evolution. He had even taken the time to review Optimus’ insipid memo on ‘traffic signs’ in human-populated areas to avoid running into another unfinished bridge! Plus, he had made discreet inquiries on wherever the human who had stolen his body was still around and active and had privately sighed in relief when Optimus had been able to confirm said human was locked up in an organic-style Stockade.

In theory, there shouldn’t have been a problem. Sentinel had accounted for everything.

Everything but stray Decepticons still hiding on Earth, apparently. Which Optimus hadn’t mentioned, and he was going to blow his audios off the moment he saw him again!

“Release…!”

“ _Release me, evil wench,_ yadda, yadda, yadda,” his captor waved dismissively, looking at him briefly. “Seriously, can’t you just shut up? You’re starting to sound like a broken record. Unless you want me to gag you? I seem to remember there was a nice mouth clamp going alongside that pair of cuffs on your wrists.”

Sentinel flushed angrily and glared at the female Seeker with all his might. “Slagger,” he muttered under his breath.

In answer, the femme walked up to him, bent down and put a finger on his lips while making a shushing sound. “Ah, ah, what did I just say? You shouldn’t call other ‘bots names; it’s rude.”

“As if a Decepticon cared about rude,” Sentinel snarked. “Especially a _Starscream_ reject like you!”

The slap he received in return wasn’t exactly a surprise, but it still happened too fast for him to follow and he was left blinking, cheek burning as he was lifted from the ground with one hand. Slag, she was a strong one, that clone.

“Never compare me to this pathetic idiot!” she hissed, optics burning, and Sentinel gulped down. “Got it, little Prime?”

“Got it,” he said nervously, eyeing the clawed hand hovering near his face with concern (no, no, not fear, just concern, honest!).

He was released just as abruptly as he had been lifted and clattered on the ground with a yelp, rolling to his back and glaring up at his captor. That had hurt! Snorting, the femme turned away and went back to check… whatever it was she was looking at on those monitors.

Sentinel watched her in silence for a moment, trying to come up with a plan, any plan for getting out of his current situation. Surely, fooling and escaping a simple Clone was easy for an Elite Guardmech like him, right?

Except, Starscream’s sole female Clone – designation Slipstream, according to the intel which had been gathered by Optimus and his team and from the interrogations of the other, captured Clones – was a lot cannier than the rest of her brethren, it appeared. She gave nothing away, no clue to their location or her intention. She didn’t gloat like her progenitor or some of her fellow Clones. She regularly checked the stasis cuffs she had strapped on Sentinel were still working. She had had the foresight to empty Sentinel’s subspace pockets of their whole content, then to put it asides in another room of her dwelling.

Basically, she was taking no chance.

It was irritating – though Sentinel supposed he could appreciate the professionalism. A pity she was a ‘Con, because she was kinda good looking, too. Sentinel wasn’t a fan of red optics, since they screamed ‘Decepticon’ louder than her frame type, but she had shapely hips and killer legs, that was for sure, and curves just in the right places. The cyan and purple of her paintjob weren’t ugly to look at either…

“Like what you see?” the femme drawled and Sentinel flushed again, embarrassed to have been caught looking (ogling) at her.

“Not at all!” Sentinel vehemently protested. As if he could be running hot from watching a filthy Decepticon! Even a femme one. “I’m only… checking out if you have weapons!”

“Sure you did,” she snorted. “As if you could have missed the two arm-mounted cannons. Pull another one, will you?”

Sentinel growled. She was exasperating! But then again, what else could she be, given she was both a Decepticon and a _Starscream’s clone_? “I do not know what game you’re playing,” he warned, “but I won’t tell you anything on the Elite Guard’s positions and…”

The Seeker threw her head back and laughed at him, as if he had said something funny – which he hadn’t! Had he? “Oh my! You still think I’m interested in Cybertron? You’re not the fastest processor in town, are you?” she asked rhetorically. “Hold your Equinoids, Sentinel _Prime_. I’m not interested in you or in whatever pitiful intel you may have in your possession.”

“Pitiful?! I’d let you know that…” Sentinel started to sputter before cutting himself short. Perhaps Slipstream didn’t know he was the Head of Elite Guard? Perhaps she thought he was some insignificant nobody like Optimus? That’d explain why she hadn’t tried to, well, torture him so far. Not that Sentinel was looking forward to torture of any kind! But if she didn’t know, then better not let her know what she had in her hands. Then he blinked. “Wait, you’re not? Whatever the Pit did you kidnap me for, then?!”

She looked at him as if he was a newly Sparked protoform. “Isn’t that obvious? You’re bait, of course.”

“Bait? Why…?” Sentinel blinked again before furrowing his optics ridges. Somehow, he felt vaguely insulted. “Oh no. No, no, no; don’t tell me it’s Optimus’ fault again! I won’t be used as a pawn in your grudge match against…!” he sputtered after a moment of reflection. Typical! Of course he’d reap what Optimus had sown… 

“Amazing how you jump to the wrong conclusion,” the femme raised an optic ridge of her own. “I don’t have any grudge to settle with the Prime commanding the units on Earth, I assure you. If anything and if he wasn’t such an Autobot, I’d almost be tempted to thank him for getting me rid of a few problems.” She made a face. “Stupid Dirt Boss,” she mumbled under her breath, so low Sentinel barely heard her – and didn’t understand what she might have been talking about. Perhaps there’d be something in Optimus’ reports Sentinel hadn’t read yet?

Urg.

Sentinel looked at her with distrust. “So you say. If I’m not bait for Optimus, then for whom?” She couldn’t mean that spider **abomination** who pretended to have been Elita, could she…? That **thing** wouldn’t come for Sentinel, so if she wanted to settle scores with one of her fellow Decepticons, she hadn’t picked the right ‘bot to lure her in!

“Why, I would have thought the answer was obvious,” Slipstream replied, chuckling. “Those two sweet little flying mechs you have brought to Earth, of course.” 

Sentinel’s jaw almost dropped. “The Twins? What would you even want with the Jettwins?” he asked stupidly. The Twins were… well, they were respectful, he’d give them that, but unruly and not exactly the sharpest tools in the box, or so Sentinel thought. Sure, the fact they were the _only_ flying Autobots existing so far gave them a certain value to which he wasn’t blind. But they had hardly been deployed yet and surely they didn’t have time to make mortal enemies yet? Unless… Oh! Oh, Sentinel just _knew_ what her angle was! 

The femme smirked. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” 

Sentinel glared at her again. Of course he knew why she wanted them! It was kinda obvious, now that he thought about it! ”What, do you want to convince them to turn Decepticons? Fat chance of that!” His chest puffed forward; Sentinel had trained the pair _himself_ , with all the experience he had gained from his stellar cycles as a Drill Sergeant. He had taught them all about loyalty to the Autobot Cause and they respected him too much to stray. “They’re perfectly loyal to the Autobot cause, despite…” 

“Despite their core programming having originated from Starscream?” Slipstream purred, making Sentinel wince. He never liked to think about this part if he could help it, never liked to remember that the Twins were _hybrids_ in the end. “And we all know how _loyal_ Starscream always was.” 

Sentinel’s Spark skipped a beat. “So?” he forced himself to say as casually as he could, shifting a bit and lying on his elbows. “They’re not Starscream – or one of you pathetic clones,” he added with a haughty sneer. “A pathological liar, a high-level sycophant,” he listed off, clucking his glossa. “And what were the others, already? Oh, yeah, according to reports, and I quote, they’re ‘the galaxy’s biggest coward’ and a ‘first-class egomaniac’, wasn’t it?” 

“I’m quite aware of the others’ default, thank you very much,” the femme replied sarcastically, tilting her hips as she put her fists on them; Sentinel followed the move, hypnotized. “Why do you think I never tried to seek them out? I can do without the burden. Besides,” she added, side-eying him, “I wouldn’t clamor too loudly about their defaults. I’ve heard quite a few tales about you as well, Autobot.” 

Sentinel bristled. “I don’t know what you have heard, but those were…!” 

“Lies?” the femme purred. “Oh, I’m sure it was. After all, no self-respecting Autobot would have contacted a bounty hunter to catch Decepticons and _lie_ about taking them prisoners himself.” 

Oh, that was a low blow! Sentinel had only suffered a temporary lapse in judgement induced by the stress of the situation! He had never done it before and he never intended to do it ever again! And who had spilled the beans?! Optimus had sworn he wouldn’t! He had lied, of course; typical! “See here…” he growled. 

“Also, no self-respecting Autobot would have drawn his plans for his intronization ceremony as Magnus from well-before he was a Minor, complete with sketches for his future cape and crown-like helmet. That’s be… very _egomaniacal_ , wouldn’t you say? Ah, oh, what kind of Autobot would lay it thick for his instructors in the Academy, keeping the doors open for them and paying compliment to their lesson plans any chance he had? A _sycophant_ wouldn’t you say?” 

Sentinel’s cheeks were hot with embarrassment. How in the Pit did that wench know that?! He had never talked about it with anyone but… Oh, slag, he realized, mentally groaning. Yeah, for once, he didn’t think he could blame Optimus; he hadn’t known about the cape bit, because Sentinel had been too self-conscious to show him the sketches even before their relationship fell out. Elita, on the other hand… He had never hidden much from Elita. Even if he refused to think of the spider lady as his once-friend and sweetspark, who knew what sort of details she could have shared with the ‘Cons? 

“That never happened!” he snapped, trying to give himself countenance and lying through his dental plates. “I only held a door open once, I’d tell you!” 

She continued on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Then there is the way you apparently screamed like a newly Sparked protoform when confronted with an organic species with more than four limbs and hide behind your shield when confronted with the local lifeform called ‘cat’ that humans keep as pets when a stray one managed to stow away on your ship.” She shook her head dejectedly. “Slag, no wonder the two young flyers latched on you; you’re practically a toned-down version of Starscream!” She cocked her head to the side as Sentinel’s jaw dropped. “You must have felt pretty familiar for their errant coding.” 

“Hey! Keep your insults for yourself! If anyone here is like Starscream, it’s you!” Sentinel spat, cheeks heated with fury. Him, a toned-down version of Starscream? Ha ha. What kind of drugs was this femme on? 

“I am,” the femme confirmed with a short nod, voice neutral, “which gives me good hopes that once they’re confronted with me and my _superior_ resemblance to their core programming, they’ll be easily convinced to ditch you for me. What a femme must do in order to find a proper trine, I swear,” she shook her head, looking dismayed. 

“Your _superior_ programming? Who do you think you can fool, you…!” Sentinel started before blinking. “Wait, a _trine_?” He stared at her long and hard in disbelief. He knew that word, from his old Academy classes. The Trine formation, a position taken by Megatron’s aerial troops. “Are you trying to say,” he started slowly, “that you kidnapped _me_ in order to convince my two subordinates to switch sides to join an _attack formation_ with you?” He must have misheard; of all the stupid plans he had ever heard that one must have taken the oil-cake! 

The femme scoffed. “An ‘attack formation’! Ah! It shows how you Autobots know little to nothing about Seekers! A trine is far, _far_ more than a banal attack formation, you ignorant ground pounder; it is a central part of a Seeker’s life.” 

“Yeah? So how comes Starscream didn’t have one, if it’s so important?” Sentinel sneered. 

Slipstream waved her hand. “Starscream is hardly an adequate representation of what a Seeker should be like; he was always one to break traditions. Granted, he may have been on something concerning some of them,” she grumbled under her breath before pinning Sentinel with a glare. “I can’t believe I even have to explain what trines are. Though I suppose asking you ground pounders to be cultured is like asking a brick to escape the laws of gravity and fly.” 

“Hey!” Sentinel snapped. Even if he had been willing to let the poke at his lack of culture slide (for he was able to recognize that he didn’t read much outside of reports; researches were for nerds like Optimus), he could recognize when he was being insulted. “Who do you call ‘ground pounder’?! Just free me and you’ll see what kind of pounding I can give you!” 

The femme blinked, took a step back and looked at him with a raised optic ridge. “… Was that a proposition?” she asked after a moment of silence. “If so, you need to work on it, because it was atrocious.” 

The Prime blinked, caught unaware. “A propo…?” Oh. **Oh**!!!! 

Sentinel felt his cheeks burning in shame, realizing the unfortunate double entendre. “That wasn’t remotely what I was suggesting!” he shouted indignantly, the hotness never leaving his cheeks. 

The femme smirked. “Is that so?” she purred, shifting and cocking a hip, fist on her waist while she stroked her lower lip with a finger. “Are you going to pretend you don’t find me _sexy_ next? I felt how hot you were running when you had your face above my aft, you know.” 

“My face wouldn’t have been anywhere near you aft if you hadn’t carried me off while slung head down over your shoulder!” Sentinel retorted indignantly. The indignity of it all burnt at his pride. 

(Though a part of him couldn’t have helped but notice that it had been a very shapely aft.) 

“Oh, I’m sure it was the only reason,” the Seeker purred again, looking amused. “Will you look at me in the optics and pretend you don’t like what you see? You certainly haven’t left your optics wander away from me since we’re here.” 

“Only because I didn’t have anything better to do,” Sentinel huffed, turning his face away to make his point. “Besides, I would be completely stupid to turn my back on a Decepticon.” 

“Right,” Slipstream drawled, as if she wasn’t convinced, despite Sentinel having been perfectly honest with her. 

… Mostly honest, anyway. 

She was a filthy ‘Con! She was abrasive, mocking, manipulating; she was a Starscream clone, for the Allspark’s sake! Everyone knew how dangerous Starscream was; it stood to reason Slipstream would be just as treacherous. As a self-respecting Autobot and an officer on top, Sentinel shouldn’t have been turned on by her at all! 

But it was hard to deny she had a nice figure, Sentinel thought despite himself. What could he say? Femmes had always been his favorite frametype to flirt with and take to berth and Slipstream was… Well, she didn’t look like the Decepticon femmes Sentinel had ever since in the archive videos they had studied in the Academy. 

Starscream’s sole female clone didn’t look anything like that brutish, massive General Strika – who Sentinel had been pressed to believe was a femme the first time he had seen her mugshot – or the enormous Zizza. She looked nothing like the ugly Shatter or the faceless Crasher, other prominent figures among the Decepticon ranks Sentinel sort-of remembered (mostly because he had made fun at their portraits once the lecture had been over). 

If anything, Slipstream’s size and her wing asides, the clone looked… Autobot-ish. Or at least enough for Sentinel to give her a double take. She had the sort of face and the sort of curves he systematically looked at when searching for a partner. Honestly, despite the ‘Con bit, he would have been tempted to give her a chance. 

If he hadn’t been her prisoner, that’s it. 

(Though, well, he wouldn’t have minded the cuffs in themselves in other circumstances. Like, if he had chosen to put them on by himself. Or better, if it had been his partner who had been bound.) 

He waited for her to say more, something, anything that would have allowed him to deny more fervently she was anything but a dangerous opponent he was keeping an optic on. Only… only she didn’t say anything. She just… kept watching him. Watching him with a smirk, red optics glinting and glowing in the dim light, so alien and different from the standard blue of the Autobots. Not only that, but her optics _roamed_ over Sentinel’s frame, which he found unnerving (and perhaps, just a bit flattering; ‘Con or not, it meant the femme had taste). 

“You’re totally not my type,” Sentinel said again, feeling increasingly ill-at-ease with the silence that kept stretching. Then he realized what he had just said and mentally kicked himself. “I mean, I don’t see how anyone could find you attractive,” he added with a huff. 

The femme purred. “Not your type, am I? Too bad, Autobot, because you’re actually mine.” 

“I… wait, what?” Sentinel blinked, mouth dropping open before he coughed awkwardly. “Well, of course I am. I’m a very attractive mech, after all,” he replied, trying to sound confidant. 

“Hmm, yes, very attractive and with an ego to match,” Slipstream waved casually, crouching down next to Sentinel. “I dare to say only your frame is attractive; the personality doesn’t match.” 

Oh, the…! Sentinel mentally swore at her. If she wanted war, she was going to have it! 

“Frag you!” Sentinel snapped at her, only to yelp when the Seeker _cupped_ his interface panel and _patted_ it. The nerves of this…! 

“With such a tiny tool?” the femme half-sneered, half-chuckled. “How cute! Please, don’t make me laugh. I doubt I’d be able to feel anything if I sat on it,” she dismissed – but her hand was still cupping between Sentinel’s legs, much to his growing mortification. 

“Hand off!” he warned, trying to shift so she’d take her hand away, but she didn’t. Sentinel tried to press his thighs together, hoping to perhaps squeeze her hand painfully to make her let go, but all it served to do was to make her press it harder against his panel. Cheeks flushing, he glared at Slipstream with all her might. “And small? I’ll let you know I’ve one of the biggest spikes in the Elite Guard!” he boasted. Which was probably a _slight_ exaggeration of the truth, but Sentinel never had to feel ashamed of his, ah, ‘equipment’ before. He was perfectly in proportion for his frame type, albeit on the bigger side, so it wasn’t exactly a lie either, was it? 

“Is that so?” Slipstream asked, licking her lips, her hand moving up and down against Sentinel’s panel, rubbing it and heating it up with her touches. Sentinel squirmed uneasily as heat started to pool in his array. Frag, how long at it been since a reasonably attractive femme had done just that? Too long, his CPU supplied. “How… interesting. Care to prove it, _little Autobot_?” she purred at his audio receptor, moving to _straddle_ him. Sentinel could feel her thighs on either side of his owns. Her hand hadn’t let go of his panel even as she moved and leant forward, letting her own panel brush against his, and Sentinel swallowed dryly as he noticed it was running hot too. “How about a deal? You show me what you hide behind that panel of yours, and I’ll show you what’s behind mine. How does it sound?” 

It was such a bad, bad idea. The absolute worse idea possible. Sentinel was an Autobot. He was a _Prime_. He was Ultra Magnus’ trusted Second (or at least he used to be; he wasn’t too sure where he stood with Acting Magnus Rodimus yet). He despised Decepticons. He wasn’t an easy mech who hopped in berth with just anyone, else he’d have had a steady interfacing partner by now. That clone had just kidnapped him. He was still bound. Rescue was on its way and could come in at any moment. 

Worst idea ever… but the _thrill_ would be worth it. 

Sentinel’s panel snapped open, exposing his valve and his spike housing. The head of his spike was already popping out, much to his embarrassment. “Wait,” he asked suspiciously, suddenly overtaken by a doubt he should have capitalized on much earlier. “You don’t intend to spike me, do you? Because I don’t take spikes!” 

Except when it came from a pretty little thing smaller than him and who didn’t risk tearing him in two. He eyed Slipstream’s panel suspiciously and with a growing feeling of dread. If she wanted to spike him, he wouldn’t be able to stop her and big as she was, the size of her spike would probably be… well, bigger than Sentinel would have felt comfortable taking. 

Please, please, please, don’t let her… 

Slipstream snorted. “Aren’t you a picky fellow? I reassure you, today I just want a spike. Do you have any idea how hard it is to actually satisfy yourself only using your fingers?” she complained, letting her panel snap asides, giving Sentinel a good view on the plump lips of her valve, her spike staying tucked in its own housing. “And this planet has a big shortage of mechs to frag with.” 

“Ye… yeah?” Sentinel’s breath hitched uneasily, feeling Slipstream’s fingers slowly slide on the head of his spike, gently coaxing it out. “How about Optimus or his team?” If they had fraternized with her, Sentinel was so going to set their afts on fire and blow their audio off with a strong reminder of the laws and regulations a proper Autobot should follow! 

… 

Never mind the fact he was technically fraternizing with the clone too. 

“What about them?” Slipstream shrugged, wings fluttering behind her back. “What, you think I should show an iota of interest toward them? Ah!” she snorted. “You’re not the only one here to have standard, Autobot, you know? I want a **real** mech, not some sort of _second rate Maintenance Technicians_ to frag me. A **real** mech like _you_!” 

Sentinel’s spike jutted in her hand, springing out of its housing as she pressed her thumb _right over his spike’s split_ as he moaned loudly, turned on as much by the way her fingers played on his spike than the way she dissed Optimus. 

(Okay, it was petty, but damn if it wasn’t a turn on!) 

“Would you look at it,” Slipstream finished with a wide grin, “it seems you weren’t completely exaggerating. Not a bad size, for an Autobot,” she nodded in appreciation, shifting forward and guiding Sentinel’s spike so the tip came to lightly brush against her anterior node before letting go and leaning back again. “Still a bit on the small size but size isn’t everything, is it?” 

Sentinel sputtered. “That… I don’t even… I’m not small! You’re the one who’s too tall!” he snapped. She totally was! No Autobot was as tall as her… well, asides of big lump like the green mech on Optimus’ team, or mechs belonging to the transport-size class. “And I’ll let you know I’m very skilled!” he added indignantly. His lovers had always said so (though given a couple of them had been going after him because of his position in the Elite Guard and with agenda of their own to further their own career, maybe he should have taken their opinion with a grain of salt). 

Slipstream chuckled. “I suppose it’s a way to look at it,” she said, moving back and getting on her hands and knees, face dangerously close to his spike. “As for your skill level, well, I suppose I’ll have to judge another time; I’ll be the one doing all the work here, after all.” Lowering her helm, she covered the tip of Sentinel’s spike with soft, fluttering kisses that made the Prime gasp and fidget despite his bonds. 

“Ye… yeah? Glad to know I won’t be the only… the only one who has it hard heeeeeere!” he gasped as Slipstream’s mouth closed around his shaft and she _sucked_ on it. His hips buckled, only for Slipstream’s hands to shot out and grab them, forcing him to stay still as her head bobbled between Sentinel’s thighs. “Oh Primus oh Primus oh Primus oh Primus!” Sentinel moaned helplessly. He tried to trash around, but Slipstream’s hands held him too firmly and for all the pleasure spreading from his spike and coursing through him, the Prime was acutely aware of the sharp talons pressing against his plating. 

Starscream’s clone hummed around his spike, watching him through half-shuttered optics. Her expression vaguely reminded Sentinel of a Cybercat which had caught a Retro-Rat but then she did _something_ with her lips and the Prime’s mind blanked. “Ooooooooh fraaaag!!! 

He was… he was going to…! 

Slipstream’s mouth left his spike with a wet ‘pop’ before he could properly reach overload and Sentinel keened, both at the loss of that wonderful wet, hot mouth on him and at being left hanging so near the edge. Stupid, slagging Decepticon! He tried to glare at her but he couldn’t conjure much heat, too hazy and disheveled from the blowjob he had just received. 

Slag, to get turned on so hard and so fast by a Decepticon… he had truly fallen low. That, and the femme was good at what she did. Was it something the original Starscream was also good at? If so, the reasons why Megatron kept him around suddenly made a lot more sense. 

“Why did you stop?” he groused unhappily, trying to cool down his frame by opening his vents at their maximum and breathing in deeply, which was only working so far. “Damnit, femme! I was so close…” 

“And I’d like a ride before you get off, thank you,” the Seeker replied, wings flapping twice behind her back as she gave him an annoyed look, a hand reaching between her own thighs and stroking her anterior node and the folds of her valve. Her voice and vents hitched slightly. “I don’t see why you should be the only one having fun, Prime Darling.” 

Sentinel swallowed, watching a finger sliding past the folds and slipping inside the opening they dissimulated as if he was hypnotized. Which might have been the case, he _was_ fragging with a Decepticon, after all. Eh. If anyone caught them, maybe it could be used to fuel his denegation he had been fully on board with what was happening (sort of)? 

“By all means,” he let out in a breath, seeing another finger disappear inside those not-so-pristine folds as lubricant dripped out (so fast! He really had to have aroused her; that was very gratifying for his ego) as Slipstream started to scissor herself open. “Ride me.” 

"With great pleasure, Autobot,” the femme purred. 

Then she did something unexpected; instead of just positioning herself and start sinking down on Sentinel’s spike as the Prime had expected she… rose to her feet. “Wh…?” the blue mech asked dumbly as Slipstream turned her back on him. “What are you…?” he asked tentatively as he watched Slipstream kneel back with her back to him, wings fluttering wildly as she hovered above Sentinel’s shaft, just shy of letting it enter her. “Why…?” 

“A femme can have her preference, Prime Darling,” Slipstream winked at his over her shoulder before lowering herself a little more while grabbing Sentinel’s spike to better guide it. The wet, hot tip slide through the folds smoothly and started pressing against the tight opening, making Sentinel gasp and whimper. 

“Ah… aaah… damn… damnit, don’t tease me!” he groaned, buckling his hips upward. Fragging tease! If she kept dragging this out… 

“Just for that, I should actually do it longer,” she said casually but there was an edge under it that let known she was serious – and that the type of teasing she could drag out wouldn’t necessarily be the pleasant kind for Sentinel. “But since I’m on a schedule, I suppose it’s better to end it quickly. Let’s have some fun, hum?” 

And with those words, she sunk herself down on Sentinel’s spike in one smooth move. Sentinel groaned, feeling himself slide into the tight, wet heat. “So gooood,” he moaned, hips buckling wildly as he tried to burrow himself further upward, only for Slipstream to give him a sharp slap on the thigh. “Hey! What was that for?!” he sputtered indignantly. 

"Ah, ah,” Slipstream said without looking at him, tutting. “I am the one controlling the pace here, Autobot. Do not make the mistake of thinking you can do as you want. Prisoner, remember?” 

“As if the cuffs would allow me to forget,” Sentinel snapped, though he had to admit for a moment that yes, the fact he was still the femme’s prisoner had slipped his mind. “Frag, I want…” 

Slipstream rose slightly and sunk back down, cutting him out before he could complain. “No protesting, Prime Darling,” she warned, “or maybe I’ll change my mind and won’t let you overload. Wouldn’t it be a fun for your friends to discover you with your panel open and your spike bobbling? I’m sure Cybertron’s gossip rags would _love_ it.” 

_Oh, slag!_

“If you think you can blackmail me…” he replied, tensing. 

“Oh, sweetling, it’s not blackmail,” the femme replied, trusting her hips forward and making Sentinel keen. “It’s a simple warning. Now, hush hush; I want to enjoy it.” 

Sentinel gritted his dental plates. He wanted to say so many things right now, none of them pleasant. But Slipstream moved again and her valve _rippled_ and Sentinel’s CPU decided that insulting the very hot femme riding his spike could wait until he had properly overloaded this time, thank you very much. 

And what a ride it was! 

The purple femme’s wings kept fluttering wildly as she moaned and groaned, rising and lowering herself on Sentinel’s spike in a sedate pace which slowly turned faster and faster. She didn’t moan his name, mind you, but the sounds she made left no doubt how much she was enjoying herself. Eh. So much for having found Sentinel’s spike to be small, he thought dimly, basking in pleasure and self-satisfaction. Her valve rippled around him, squeezing his shaft so hard he almost overloaded on the spot several times only for the clone to rise up and let him slide out of her almost the entire way out before sinking back on him again. 

At one point, her wing tips almost bashed him in the face, but Sentinel was past the point of caring. He was so… so… so… close… 

Overload washed over him with a loud cry as he felt the tip of his spike come alight, transfluid shooting out of the hypersensitive split at the top and drowning itself in the pretty femme’s valve. She had cried out too and had stilled, her valve rippling. 

… Though a lot more slowly than he would have expected. When such a femme reached her peak, he’d have thought it’d be more obvious. But that was probably nothing, his hazy mind decided. Not everyone was very demonstrative upon overloading, after all, even if they were loud during the interfacing act itself. 

“Wow,” he muttered, shaking his head to clear his thoughts. His shoulders and wrists ached from the cuffs and the awkward position it was forcing his arms in. “It was… intense,” he finished weakly. 

“Indeed,” the femme replied, not turning to face him. Her voice had gone strangely flat. Slowly, she rose from her kneeling position, Sentinel’s spent spike sliding out easily, covered in fluid. Taking a rag from her subspace, Slipstream started to wipe out the mess on the inside of her thighs, wings flapping briefly as she did so. “Well, at least that’s something taken care of.” 

Then she threw the rag away and walked back toward the monitors, leaving Sentinel blinking. 

“Eh. Eh! Wait a klik here!” he shouted indignantly, shuffling in place. “What about me?” 

“What about you?” the femme looked at him over her shoulder, raising an optic ridge. “You got what you wanted, no?” 

“Aren’t you going to clean me? It’s not like I can do it myself,” he snapped. 

“Hum,” Slipstream tapped her lower lip with a digit. “How about… no?” 

“Wh… You don’t intend to leave me like that?! What will the others…?” the Prime sputtered, looking down at the mess on his thighs with alarm. Oh, he could automatically tuck his spike back in and snap his panel close, but his plating was still stained with transfluid and lubricant and there were a few purple stripes on his thighs that left little doubts to what had occurred between him and the Seeker. 

Slipstream chuckled. “Oh, they’ll probably think you had a fun time. Or that you couldn’t defend yourself from the big, bad Decepticon that was holding you hostage. I wonder which one will be the most damaging to your reputation?” She cocked her head to the side, smirking, and Sentinel’s Spark sunk. 

The absolute… bitch! 

She had planned it from the get-go! And he had played straight into her hands! 

“You… you conned me!” he accused her, CPU scrambling as he considered the implications of being convicted of fraternizing with an enemy soldier, especially with his position already fragilized by the Guilds supplanting him with Rodimus Prime of all mechs. He could pretend to have been raped, of course, which would be less damaging for his career… but far worse for his reputation; he’d be seen as weak and traumatized and forced into therapy and Sentinel might not be able to hide the truth indefinitely. 

He was… he was fragged either way, was he? 

“Decepticon, remember?” the femme replied silkily. “That’s what we do. Now be a good mech and shut up until your friends get here, will you? I wonder what those flying Twins of yours will think when they see you like that.” 

“They won’t listen to you!” Sentinel snapped, Spark beating fast. Slag, the Jettwins! What were they going to think indeed? Sentinel had always made sure they saw him as a model to follow, strong and worthy of respect. Jetstorm and Jetfire followed him around and listened to him more than they listened to Jazz, even if the other mech was supposedly ‘friendlier’. They hung to each of Sentinel’s words. Recently, they had even taken to do menial chores for him, such as cleaning his office, and kept bringing him gifts. At least THEY respected Sentinel! If they saw him like that… But they wouldn’t be swayed into changing side by such a little thing! 

Would they? 

“They’re _loyal_ Autobots, I told you already! They’re loyal to _me_!” he boasted, trying to appear more confident than he felt. 

Something flashed in Slipstream’s optics but her smirk didn’t slip. If anything, she looked more amused. “We shall see, Prime Darling. We shall see. Something tell me that whatever happens when they get here for _you_ , it’ll be very interesting to witness.” She eyed the mess on Sentinel’s thighs. “Very interesting indeed…” 

Her smirk widened and Sentinel felt a shiver go down his spinal strut. He didn’t like the way she had spoken, as if she knew something he didn’t about the Jettwins. But what could she know? She was just a bitchy, manipulative Starscream clone and the Jettwins were… flying Autobots. 

Coding coming from Starscream or not, they had nothing in common. 

… Right? 

**__**

*-*-*-*-*-*

::Jetstorm! Jetfire! Do no rush ahead! Do not…!::

The frantic calls received no answer.

“Damnit,” Jazz cursed aloud as the two flying Autobots went out of comm. range, flying ahead at a speed the black and white mech had only witnessed once on Cybertron, during a very intense training session. The moment they had gotten a hold of Sentinel’s personalized distress beacon (which was so very welcome now, Jazz wasn’t going to complain anymore about its standard implantation in every Elite Guard personnel of a certain rank), they had been no way to stop or rule them in. “They’re not even listening to me anymore; since when don’t they?” he half-whined, half-worried. “What kind of nanoflea bite them?”

Jetstorm and Jetfire were good ‘bots and usually good soldiers despite their exuberance, but today…

It was worrisome. Very, very worrisome. Sure, Jazz had been warned the Twins’ behavior might be subject to fluctuations, but that? That went beyond what he had expected and what Perceptor and Wheeljack had hinted at.

_“Their coding has gone through a spontaneous evolution recently, one we had not foreseen nor planned for and which may strongly impact the future of Project Safeguard and its eventual replication. We’re still trying to compile and analyze data in a suitable manner in order to understand how the evolution started and why and how we may reduce the effects in future subjects or at least control the outcome. It may affects their behavioral patterns or it may not. For now, we’re keeping them under supervision.”_

_“… No, we don’t think there is a risk of them spontaneously turning on the Autobots or reversing to utterly aggressive Decepticon behavioral conduct. The nature of the change may be more… Ah, well. We’re not fully certain of the extent of the problem. Truthfully, we’re not even certain there will **be** a problem. Or at least, not a big one… mostly? Yes, yes, I know it doesn’t sound encouraging, sorry. It’s just… The Twins’ coding haven’t fully finished to evolve yet, so we’re not certain as of the end result. Well, no; we know the end results, since their coding was copied from a Seeker, but given they’re not Seekers themselves, it might be slightly different for them. That’s why I’m spending so much time digging old files in the Archives, to see what we may or may not expect once Jetstorm and Jetfire start focusing on an individual. But I’ll tell you more about it later.”_

_“That said, we’re also certain the Twins **will** be acting up on new, irrepressible instincts if circumstances push them to. We’re counting on you, Agent Jazz, to observe and watch their behavior discreetly and regularly report on what you see and hear to help us collect sufficient data.”_

_“Sentinel Prime is not to be in the known. He’s a good enough soldier, I will grant you, but I do not judge him calm and discreet enough to do surveillance without tipping his target’s attention. If he asks why he’s not being reassigned to another position or why he must accompanies the twins off Cybertron, he’ll be reminded he’s one of their primary instructors and their direct superior, which should quell his questioning.”_

_“… No, he needs to go with you on Earth. If we’re right, his presence might be needed in order to keep the new coding developed by Jetstorm and Jetfire under control. Unless it’s yours. Right now, we’re not fully certain. From your own admission, they showed some of the same behavior toward you – which, all things considered, isn’t that surprising. Both of you are important figures in the twins’ life, after all. It always was a fifty/fifty odd, no matter how unscientific Perceptor will find it.”_

_“… I know you hate not telling him, since it will affects him as well, but keep silence for a little longer, Jazz. We will tell Sentinel Prime ourselves upon your return to Cybertron. By the time you do, I should have found a way to translate Percy’s reports into something more easily understandable for a profane – and hopefully into something that won’t make him flip out.”_

_“It’s just a couple more decacycles; what could happen until then?”_

A lot, it turned out, Jazz thought ferociously. He should have reminded Wheeljack Earth was kinda special like that; it kept springing unexpected problems on you. Dimly, Jazz couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps the planet was sentient and had decided Sentinel was as good a chew toy as any. Because when you checked his track record with the planet…

No, not going there, he decided firmly. Point was, anything could happen on Earth, including things they had never hoped or planned for.

Like getting one of you coworkers/superior officer kidnapped, thus sending two flying youngsters in a panic – or with a determinate focus that augured nothing good for the kidnapper.  
Pit.

The Cyberninja’s Spark wrenched painfully in its casing. If Wheeljack and Perceptor still had had any doubt on _who_ the Jettwins had chosen, then said doubts had just been mauled, crushed underfoot and threw into the incinerator. Jazz was slightly disappointed. Kinda relieved too. Oh, and worried too, because how _Sentinel_ was going to take the news, that, he had no idea.

Slag, and if something happened to him, what would the Twins do…?

“They’re probably just worried for Sentinel,” Optimus, blessedly unaware Optimus, who just knew his (former?) friend was in the clutch of a Decepticon and wasn’t elbows-deep in the Ministry of Sciences’ secret orders, offered, rolling a bit behind Jazz. “I know it’s not really an excuse to break protocol or refusing to acknowledge a superior officer, but… Please, don’t be too hard on them?”

Give credit where it was due, Jazz was rather impressed Optimus Prime could keep up with him. Jazz was a fast mech even in his original Cybertronian mode and the sweet alt he had picked on Earth had boosted his stats further, one more reason to be fond of his new shell. The Prime’s altmode was more massive and slower than his, in accordance with Optimus’ own limitations as a truck-type, and the additional weight he was dragging behind him was probably handicapping him, but still he followed Jazz without complaint and without losing ground despite the fast pace, whereas Ratchet had been left behind completely.

Color him impressed.

The rest of Optimus’ team weren’t slouch either, Jazz could admit. But Ratchet couldn’t ‘roll as fast as you young punks anymore’ and had let himself distanced and Bulkhead had chosen to hang around him as a bodyguard of sort in case of a surprise attack (sensitive thought, that; they didn’t know if Sentinel had been taken by more than one enemy mech, after all. Jazz would be certain to put a good word for Bulkhead’s level-headedness when it’d be time to fill the incident report) and Prowl and Bumblebee…

Well, they were making their way to them as fast as they could after dealing with the last of the ‘distraction’ the ‘Con who had kidnapped Sentinel had set for them in one of human ally Isaac Sumdac’s factories.

Slag, but Jazz hated it when the Decepticons fought smart; it never ended well.

Despite himself, his sensors followed the clear lines of Optimus’ trailer. The Prime had insisted they take it with them and well, Jazz hadn’t saw fit to argue. After all, the trailer was ideal to store weapons, medical items or an injured comrade (and frag it, but Jazz hoped it wouldn’t be necessary and he ruthlessly squashed down the thought that Optimus’ trailer would also be ideal to bring back an offline shell). Ratchet might need an operating, transportable Medbay; they had, after all, no idea of the shape they were going to find Sentinel in.

For all their sake, he hoped SP was actually alright.

Eyeing the skyline where the shapes of Jetfire and Jetstorm had disappeared, Jazz replied warily in Optimus’ direction. “So am I, my mech. So am I…”

*-*-*-*-*-*

Someone had _taken_ Mr. Sentinel Prime, Sir, and it was **inacceptable**. Nobody was allowed to try and harm Mr. Sentinel Prime, Sir. Deep inside Jetfire’s CPU, coding sublines he had barely taken notice of before were activating with a vengeance – just like their did in Jetstorm’s own cortex.

They didn’t need to speak to each other aloud to just _know_ they were thinking of the same thing and sharing the same feeling. It wasn’t telepathy per se, at least not like it was described in the Sciences datapads they had read about outliners and their special abilities. It was something more diffuse, something which only existed between the two of them. Not like a Twin Bond, which they had but felt differently, but more like… pack mates. Yes, pack mates. Or no, not really; it wasn’t the right word for what they felt, what they wanted to call each other, but it was close enough and it would do until they had a chance to ask Mister Jazz and Mister Sentinel Prime on vocabulary. Pack mates united in one single goal, and that goal was: _get Mister Sentinel Prime, Sir, back_ by any way necessary.

And thoroughly reclaims him.

They didn’t talk, didn’t try to play tag with each other the way they usually did when flying. They were focused, tracking down Mister Sentinel’s signal with a focus that would have made those who knew them raise an optical ridge, surprised to the way the usually easygoing, friendly brothers were reacting.

There was nothing easygoing in their mind right now. They had a mission, and they were going to fulfill it.

The proximity signal beeped and both brothers barreled, effortlessly changing direction with nary a care, not even once wondering if their ground-bound allies (they weren’t pack, even if they were still friends) would be able to follow them.

Mister Sentinel Prime was close, and that was all that mattered to them.

*-*-*-*-*-*

The sound of running twin flying engines echoed in the air, making Slipstream perk up from the console on which she was working. “Already? Well, well, well,” she drawled, letting her fingers run over the keys, nodding to herself in satisfaction as the screen let her know the data transfer was finally complete before switching to black. Good thing she had preferred to let nothing to chance, she mused silently as she racked her claws and started to slash at the control and the screen, rendering the machine inefficient.

She shook off wires and tiny debris which had tangled around her claws before turning and walking deeper in the cavern. “I admit, they’re faster than I had anticipated. You have trained very efficient soldiers, I must congratulate you,” she nodded at the bound form lying a few feet away from her. Stroking her chin with a finger, she added thoughtfully. “Too bad; I wouldn’t have minded a second round. Would you?” she asked fake-sweetly.

The Autobot’s answer was to glare at him with all his might and let out an influx of muffled sounds which were _probably_ insults, not that Slipstream could confirm. When Sentinel Prime had started to get a runny mouth about the state of his thighs and the fact everyone would know he had interfaced with a Decepticon, she had decided listening to him further wasn’t worth it and had promptly gagged him. Eh, he had been warned so if he was unhappy, he could only blame himself.

“Tss, mechs, they’re never happy,” the femme shook her head in good humor before turning away, eyeing what she could of the skyline by the grotto’s entry. The sound was coming closer, though she judged she still had a few kliks before the two flying Autobots got there; sound carried easily and from a long distance in the valley, one of the many reasons for which she had chosen this very spot to establish a hideout. She liked to have forewarning when it came to unwelcome visitors (and given she had no ally to speak of, all visitors were by definition unwelcome).

Her optics wandered back to Sentinel Prime’s bound form and she hummed thoughtfully. What to do with him now? Should she…? Hmm, it was risky; there was no way to know how deep the coding had already taken the two junior Elite Guard members yet. While she still hoped to bring them over to her side, unlike her original template, Slipstream rarely contented herself with a single scheme at once. She always made certain to have two or three backup plans and kept working on more on the sly. She was already using one, to be honest, because the chances the original would work had been slim to begin with, but if the flying Twins were already here… Yeah, it didn’t bode well for her original idea.

If the Twin flying mechs had already _chosen_ , nothing she’d say or do would help.

Granted, she had never truly expected it to work _now_. Perhaps, if she had managed to find Shockwave’s notes earlier and found out exactly _what_ part of Starscream and Seekers coding the Autobots had sliced in and replicated… Perhaps, if she had been able to contact them earlier and slide into their close circle, when they were still unsettled… Ah, but what use was there in regretting things that would have never come to pass anyway?

She had already gotten something she wanted out of the current plan, Slipstream reminded herself.

What she needed now was to make sure to cover her exit.

And she might have just the perfect mean to, she mused as she crossed gaze with Sentinel Prime, whose optics widened, probably having understood what she was thinking about from the look on her face.

Slowly, Slipstream started to smile. It was one of those ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation’ humans sometimes spoke of on their Internet. It might just put the Twins into a wordless rage… or it would stop them dead in their tracks and allowed her time to slip away.

“What is life without risks?” she said aloud for herself before advancing and the wiggling Prime. “Sorry for the inconvenience, darling, but I have a pressing need for you…”

*-*-*-*-*-*

Mister Sentinel Prime was here.

The statement, the certainty of it crossed both their CPUs at the exact same time as the proximity signal pinged. In tandem, Jetfire and Jetstorm cut their thrusters and transformed mid-air, letting themselves freefall before controlling their drop by reactivating the aforementioned thrusters at just the right time, landing on a rocky ledge slightly below the open mouth of a cavern. Tricky, hard place to find; it was the perfect place to hide a lair, Jetstorm internally marveled as he took one of Jetfire’s pedes in his hands and gave him a lift before his brother caught his arm and lifted him up.

Sure, they could have landed directly in the cavern, but they weren’t so far gone with worry for their Mister Sentinel Prime that they had forgotten their lessons on traps and safeties first and not to fly in what was possibly an ambush.

It was bad enough they had ditched Mister Jazz and the rest of the Earth-bound Autobots, something they vaguely knew they’d have to answer for when everything was said and done. They couldn’t help Mister Sentinel Prime if they got taken out by rushing too much along, could they?

But a quick check showed that the cavern’s entry wasn’t trapped after all. Eck, there wasn’t even a hidden mechanism to, Jetfire didn’t know, lock a heavy metal door behind them once they had gotten in, or a security camera filming them to show the Decepticon who had kidnapped Mister Sentinel Prime that they were here.

Curious. It was as if the place wasn’t even a proper lair at all, for all it was hard to reach by non-flyers and well hidden in the outcrops of rock…

The vague suspicious flew away, though, as soon as they progressed a little further in the cave. Both brothers held each other’s hand briefly before relaxing.

If they had had any doubt the distress beacon was leading them to the wrong place, it was now dispelled.

The air smelled a lot like the polish Mister Sentinel Prime liked to use. They were certain it was him because he had applied a new layer just before he left and got himself taken by that badness ‘bot. also, it was a very expensive polish, something Mister Sentinel Prime had often gloated about, and there was no way anyone else on Earth could have own any. It was so heavy and potent, they could practically _taste_ his presence already. They liked the scent, because it was almost indissociable in their CPU from Mister Sentinel Prime himself and his EM field, and they liked… no, they _loved_ Mister Sentinel Prime.

Mister Sentinel Prime was _really here_.

And they were going to _save him_.

And kick some Decepticons afts in the process.

They barely glanced at each other before Jetfire took the lead, flames engulfing his arms as he pointed them forward, tense and ready to throw fire to any enemy he came across. In the cavern’s cramped space, it’d be a lot more efficient than his brother’s gush of winds, something they both acknowledged without a word. Jetfire would lead the fight; Jetstorm would locate Mister Sentinel Prime and free him. And if the badness ‘bot who had kidnapped him was too though for one of them alone to handle… then Safeguard would kick their aft!

See, Mister Sentinel Prime, Sir? They remembered their lessons well! Sir had made sure they knew what to do if they had to fight in cramped quarters, and they had taken it to the Spark; he was going to be so proud they had remembered!

Chests puffing a bit at the idea, the Twins progressed forward cautiously, Jetstorm checking around for potentially hidden traps. Even for their high-running processors, it seemed just… a little too easy. They should have gotten shot at already, that was how it went in simulations. But the bad Decepticon wasn’t around, even if they could see traces she really was there (a streak of paint on a rock from a wing that had brushed too close, a few discarded pieces of technology, perhaps for spare parts, that they had to step over to avoid tripping on, a couple of discreetly placed lights that gave emitted a low glow that wouldn’t be seen from the outside), Mister Sentinel Prime wasn’t hanging in plain sight like a big, attractive bait to be rescued and they could only follow the scent of his polish further down the cavern.

The scent was… not like usual, and it made them frown. There was another scent mixed in, a scent they didn’t like at all and made them both tense, a scent that had _no business mingling with Mister Sentinel Prime, Sir’s own_ and it was putting them further on edge. Jetfire had to bit on his lower lip and a small hiss escaped Jetstorm as he inhaled deeply. The place _smelled_ of Mister Sentinel Prime, but it smelled a lot of someone else too, and it smelled of ozone and oil and lubricant and they didn’t like it at all because it _didn’t belong_.

And there were the noises, too. It had been really faint at first, but now they could hear them clearer. It wasn’t Mister Sentinel Prime’s voice, they both noticed at once. It was higher pitched, for one, and the cadence was all wrong. The Decepticon Lady, they realized at once, and Jetstorm had to grab his brother’s arm (narrowly avoiding a burn) to stop him from rushing forward. Sure, Mister Sentinel Prime was probably with her _right now_ and they needed to save him, but… ‘trap’, he mouthed silently to his brother, looking grim, and Jetfire gave a jerky nod.

Always think of traps, Mister Sentinel Prime (and Jazz) kept repeating.

There didn’t seem to be an obvious one, but they both paused while Jetstorm made a quick check for hidden tripwires or laser sensors or anything like that. It forced them to listen to the voice more closely. It… there weren’t any words said, really, which was puzzling, because she seemed close enough that they’d be able to easily discern whatever she was saying. Instead, it all seemed to be… heavy panting. Little moans, too. Perhaps, vaguely, something that sounded like a ‘yes’, but breathier.

That sounded… well, like the noises they sometimes heard in the barracks when it was down time. Now, Jetstorm and Jetfire were young, but they weren’t _that_ naïve and they knew what pleasuring oneself sounded like, and it was just like that. But it made no sense for a Decepticon who had to know they were high on her heels to play with herself… did it?

How puzzling.

Jetfire tilted his head to the side, puzzled as he exchanged a brief look with his shrugging brother. No, he didn’t see a reason why the Decepticon would do that. No matter, the Twins decided unanimously. The only important thing was Mister Sentinel Prime’s safety and he **was** with the Decepticon Lady. If they listened closely, they could actually _hear_ him too, albeit very faintly. As if someone was blocking his voice. Gag, perhaps?

Jetstorm felt affronted for Mister Sentinel Prime, Sir if it was the case; he was too fine a mech to suffer the indignity of getting **gagged** , especially by a nasty, low-life Decepticon!

Just for that, he promised himself, she was going to get punched but good!

But the thought gave away as they rounded the corner and they both froze in shock, vocalizers almost spitting statics at the sight before them.

They didn’t really pay attention to what had to be the main ‘hub’ of the lair, as sparsely furnished as it was, with only a low bench or two and a couple monitors that had been thoroughly broken, screens punched through. They didn’t spare a thought for potential intel retrieval (though to be fair, they had never been coached about it; they had been first and foremost trained for combat), nor on the oddity of Starscream’s female clone being able to truly _live_ in a place that was more Spartiate than Optimus Prime’s own base, hinting that maybe this place could be a _decoy_ and not the Decepticon Lady’s true base.

No.

The only thing they saw was their enemy, the Decepticon Lady herself. Her back was turned to them and in any other circumstances, they might have taken advantage of it and attacked her directly (that was what Mister Sentinel Prime had always preconized and what Jazz had hinted to be acceptable when it came to dangerous Decepticons), but their motor relays were refusing to obey them for some reason.

More than their enemy, however, they saw **Mister Sentinel Prime, Sir**. Mister Sentinel Prime, Sir who was **lying on the dirty floor** (poor Mister Sentinel! He hated to be dirty!). Mister Sentinel Prime, Sir who was lying on the floor **with his hands cuffed behind his back and a gag stuffed in his mouth**! Mister Sentinel Prime, Sir who was lying on the floor with his hands cuffed behind his back and a gag stuffed in his mouth, **his interface panel popped open for everyone to see**!

And the nasty, dirty, low-life Decepticon Lady was _lying all over him_ and touching him place the Twins were certain a fine mech like Mister Sentinel Prime would **never** have allowed a Decepticon to touch him.

The Decepticon Lady was _nibbling_ on one of Mister Sentinel Prime’s helmfins and she had her fingers in…

Jetfire audibly chocked and his flames died down immediately as his processor tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Jetstorm, quicker on the update, jumpstarted his turbines, making them howl as he growled himself.

It made the femme pause in whatever she was doing and she looked over her shoulder, looking neither surprised nor discontent from being interrupted in her ‘business’. Under her, Mister Sentinel Prime made a noise of protest – at least they thought it was protest, hard to say with the gag.

“Look like our guests are finally here, Prime Darling,” the femme Seeker drawled as she rose to her feet, taking her hands off Mister Sentinel Prime. Jetstorm and Jetfire bared their dental plates at her, optics paling until they were nearly white as they zoomed on the fluids coating her fingers. Not just any fluids, either, no.

_Mister Sentinel Prime’s lubricant._

They could see it all, oh yes, the sticky, purplish coating spreading all over two of those long, clawed digits, darker in tone at the tip and clearer and sparser at the bottom due to less quantity. Optics slowly dropped to Mister Sentinel Prime’s body, who looked up at them in a daze, legs spread wide. The same coat of lubricant was peeking through the lips of his valve, a drop lazily making its way past the folds, looking _so_ bright against the dark grey mesh of his private parts. And Mister Sentinel Prime’s _spike_ was **out** and half-raised and there was a _smudge_ of purplish fluid there which **didn’t belong**!

A smudge, the Twins realized with matching growls, which repeated itself on Mister Sentinel Prime’s face, all around the gag stuffed in his mouth and on his lips. A smudge that looked a little too much like lubricant too – lubricant closer in color to the one staining the _Decepticon Lady’s own bare interface components_.

(Which they weren’t interested in the slightest and hadn’t even noticed the bareness of until now. It hadn’t seemed _important_ , not in their sudden rage-hazed processors. The Decepticon Lady was, arguably, nice to look at, and something _inside_ them had looked at her, hummed… and set her asides immediately, because she wasn’t ::compatible mate::/::potential rival::/::not part of the Trine::. It was so subtle they weren’t even consciously aware of it, but their EM field fluctuated, reached for each other, then settled back with a sense of certainty as they slightly shifted their posture. Had they had wings, they would have flared in display.)

(None of it escaped Slipstream, whose optics briefly flashed as she had confirmation of what she had suspected.)

The femme just smirked at them, and the Twins felt incensed.

The Decepticon Lady had touched **their** Mister Sentinel Prime.

And she had the bolts to look at them calmly too, before looking at her fingers with a raised optic ridge and _bringing them to her mouth to lick them clean_. Jetstorm’s turbines stopped short while fire sprouted all over Jetfire’s frame in fury.

In their CPU, a switch they hadn’t been aware of just went off.

An unaware onlooker might not have noticed the difference, not right away. But Slipstream was not unwary, and she had fully accounted on this very aspect of flyer coding and persona to show up. Right on schedule too.

“Hmm, delicious. For an Autobot, he tastes really sweet; I’m sure you will agree,” the femme half-purred at she looked at them with a cocky expression, lowering her now clean hand to her side.

The Twins didn’t look at her hand, though. They looked at Mister Sentinel Prime, at his flushed cheeks as he looked right back at them, optics wide and panicky, reeking embarrassment and fury at having been most likely molested against his will by a vile Decepticon. His optics darted between them and the enemy femme, the ::Not Trine:: who had dared to touch ::one of them:: so intimately and who didn’t seem to have the good graces of being ::remorseful/ashamed/ready to make amend::.

They could see it in the cant of her wings, in the way she shifted her weight from one thruster heel to the other. They didn’t pause to wonder how they _understood_ what seemed to be a complicated, non-verbal language they had never witnessed before, and how they might be answering in cue, even if they didn’t have wings to show off the sense of ::wronged:: that was washing over them. The way their optics (or visor, in Jetstorm’s case) flashed, the way they bared their dental plates and the aggression in their EM field was sufficient to express ::MINEMINEMINEMINEMINEMINE:: as their optics went from Mister Sentinel Prime to the ::intruder::.

They ought to kill her for that! And that was exactly what they were going to do!

“Dead,” Jetstorm hissed.

“Rip your wings,” Jetfire added, flames spreading over his arms.

“Not touching other people’s ::Trine::,” they both proclaimed at once, the world rolling on their glossa at the same time. It wasn’t Neocybex, it was more guttural, more ancient. It was something barely heard still on Cybertron itself, for all the native Speakers had left in the Decepticon exodus.

It was High Vosian speech, and they spoke it the most naturally in the world without worrying.

Mister Sentinel Prime made weird noises, but they ignored it for now, optics all on the offender they were going to rip apart for her audacity.

“Hmm, really?” the femme murmured pensively, tapping her lower lip. “::Trine::, is he? And _yours_? Oh, forgive me the offense,” she gave a mocking bow, “but how was I supposed to know that this little mech was ::taken::? After all,” she added as her wings moved slowly in sharp, specific angles that left the Twins reeling and taking a step back. ::No Scent::, they said. ::No mark::, they affirmed. ::Untrined::, they hinted.

No… not ::Untrined::, they both jerked, rage in their processors leaving place to dull realization.

::UNCLAIMED::

That was… Mister Sentinel Prime was ::Trine::, they both wanted to say. ::Trine:: in the sense where Jetfire and Jetstorm had _both_ chosen him, of a common accord, to be their third, to ::complete the formation:: and ::have their back:: and ::share everything::.

But ::Trine:: wasn’t technically ::Trine:: so long the bonds weren’t properly forged, or so the primary instincts that were starting to overcome their higher thinking function kept whispering. The Decepticon Lady was still ::intruder::, still had touched ::Trine/not her own::… but Mister Sentinel Prime wasn’t properly ::Trine:: yet, because they hadn’t stacked their claim beyond ::choosing:: and ::broadcasting::. And without wings of their own, there was only so much they could ::broadcast:: for others to ::stay away:: from an ::Unmarked Flock::, which was what Mister Sentinel Prime really was, as far as the _other Seeker_ could see.

The brothers exchanged a dark look. They still wanted to hurt her, still wanted to see her energon run on the floor even if suddenly, her death didn’t seem so much a necessity and more like a potential, acceptable outcome. But… there were more important things to do first.

“Leave,” Jetstorm hissed, visor darkening to an almost purplish color that made Mister Sentinel Prime made noises of alarm – silly Mister Sentinel Prime, there was no reason to be afraid, he wasn’t angry at him! “Now.”

“Before we be changing advice,” Jetfire nodded alongside his brother, hands still full of flames.

The _other Seeker_ wings lowered in a proper display of ::contrition::/::shame::/::apology:: as she gathered her hands before her and bowed low, which made their Sparks soar briefly in satisfaction. She didn’t look from the floor as she walked past them, but her wings twitched.

::Yours::, they acknowledged without words, and the Twins didn’t bother watching her go, because she had ::accepted her loss::/::wasn’t a threat to Trine:: anymore. She didn’t matter anymore.

Only Mister Sentinel Prime mattered, now.

Slowly, the Twins knelt to the floor on either side of his bound form, optics dark and frames itching.

“Oh, Mister Sentinel Prime, Sir,” murmured Jetfire as he reached for the unseemly gag stopping their ::Trinemate:: from speaking.

“We be making you ::Trine:: now,” Jetstorm completed, and he reached for the Prime’s spike.

*-*-*-*-*-*

To say Sentinel was having a bad day was an understatement. Truthfully, asides of the solar cycle where he had lost Elita thank to (his own) _Optimus’_ fault and _perhaps_ the day he had almost been killed during his time as Drill Sergeant, he didn’t think he had ever been in a worst situation before.

The whole ‘captured by a rogue Decepticon’ thing had been bad enough, but to think he had _deceived_ into **interfacing** with his captor and was now spotting the marks of their romp all over his thighs and pelvic armor…!

Argh.

If it had happened when he had still been a Minor, his career would have been toast, no question asked. Even now, Sentinel worried about what he would be able to salvage when everything was said and done and what sort of defense he could build for himself. What would have the most chances to convince a hypothetical jury he was not to blame? 

He had still been considering his options when he had heard the familiar noise the Twins produced whenever they cut loose flying. His Spark had flared in relief; finally, he was getting rescued! Sure, there’d be complications to deal with, but no longer being in the claws of that _flying harlot_ would be a relief.

He couldn’t wait to see the Twins pummeling that smug smile off her face. It’d be a very sweet revenge for all the indignity she had run him through. Kidnapping him. Tying him up. Using him like a vulgar interfacing toy. _Gagging him_ when he had started to tell her exactly what he thought of her and her depravity.

Most of the words he had tried to shout at her ever since she had slipped that _thing_ in his mouth would have make polite, well-bred ‘bots overheat with shame, but Sentinel was past caring about keeping up appearances of civility.

The Twins were coming for him, and whatever that femme might have implied, they were both true, loyal Autobots. Perhaps a bit too rowdy, true, and their speech patterns really needed to be improved, but on the whole, they were capable soldiers. They’d be more than enough to take down a single opponent like that femme Seeker…

… Who had started to look at him again with an expression he didn’t like **at all**. She looked contemplative and… hungry at the same time. The type of ‘hungry’ look he used to see on Elita’s face when she… filthy thoughts about him, according to her hushed confession after one time they had interfaced.

(He had always suspected that she might have entertained the same kind of thoughts about Optimus, even if she had never acted on it. At least not as far as Sentinel knew.)

Sentinel had fidgeted uneasily, trying to wiggle away. He didn’t like that look. Not with what they… _she_ had done to him earlier. Not with how close the Twins probably were by now, even if sound seemed to carry far. He wasn’t certain what she had had in mind exactly, but that couldn’t be good for him.

She had walked toward him, and Sentinel had tensed, expecting anything.

… Alright, Slipstream opening her panel and fingering herself in front of him wasn’t _exactly_ what he had anticipated happening. Optics wide, Sentinel could only watch her touch herself, trying to not react at what had to be **provocation**. His engine emitted a low, long sound he couldn’t control. Slag her, he thought desperately and waspishly as he tried to mute it.

Sure, the Clone had manipulated him and he resented her with all his Spark, but she was still very attractive, in an exotic kind of way, and the excess energy that had built up in Sentinel’s systems hadn’t fully dissipated with his overload. That was one hang-up of his frame he could have done without, this lingering of energy every time he got properly worked up.

He could feel a smash of heat behind his panel, despite his attempts to clamp down on any and all excitation.

Suffice to say, he didn’t manage fast enough and his panel made a creaky sound, making his cheeks heat up, as he tried desperately to keep it closed. It only seemed to amuse the Decepticon further.

“My, for someone who claimed hard and loud you’d never let yourself caught by the ‘evil wiles of a Decepticon femme’, you certainly seem to be relapsing fast,” she drawled, pumping her fingers in and out of herself in a steady, fast rhythm. Sentinel’s optics were draws to them and the purplish glow of her lubricant as she removed them at last and took a few steps toward him, smirking. “Just as well; I don’t have much time before me, so you’ll forgive me if I’m rushing this along. You’ll forgive me my manners, I’m sure,” she winked as she knelt over him, pushing his thighs apart with her knees.

The sheer gall of that…!

All of Sentinel’s rather expensive insult vocabulary (which he rarely used because he was a respectable ‘bot, thank you very much) failed him, however, next to what happened afterward.

The fact the femme reached for his panel and more or less forced it apart, he had expected (and if anyone asked, Sentinel would insist she had forced it open all the way and she hadn’t just needed a few persistent pat to make it slide open). The fact she smeared her _lubricant covered fingers all over his face_ , however, he had NOT expected at all and he frowned in disgust at she smeared his lips all around the gag.

And as if the indignity wasn’t enough, she had… Ugh. She had started to _finger his valve_ with her dirty Decepticon digits!

He had feared something worse would happen…

And Jetfire and Jetstorm had arrived.

Sentinel didn’t know what was worst; getting caught in this situation, or knowing that if they hadn’t come along, that manipulative witch could have continued pawing at him in all impunity. At least, he consoled himself, given how they had found him, the Twins would never suspect there might have been a previous, not-exactly-non-consensual prior ‘incident’ between him and the Seeker femme.

He wouldn’t escape a report and potentially therapy, but that wouldn’t be the worst outcome.

He just needed to spin it right, but he was certain once the Twins had thrashed the Decepticon, he’d be easily able to.

Except they _didn’t thrash the Decepticon_ , much to Sentinel’s consternation. Instead, they… talked? No, they _hissed_ at her, hissed words he didn’t understand. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t Cybertronian Standard (or Neocybex, as it was also referred to), which was weird because he couldn’t remember the Twins’ files mentioning either of them spoke anything but the modern form of the Cybertronian language.

He had gotten he death threats before they slipped, sure, but why _weren’t they acting on them_? Why were they staying dumbstruck, listening to her? Why were they letting her slip away without a move to stop her?!

All sorts of alarms started ringing in the back of his CPU as the Twins knelt beside him and tore off his gag _at last_ and switching back to a language he at least _knew_ , even if they were still sprouting words he couldn’t understand here and now.

It was tempting to give them a dress-down for failing to act like proper Autobots and stopping the Decepticon, but that could wait until they freed him and he regained some countenance – and found a way to cover himself, because his panel wasn’t responding to his order to close.

“Optics up, soldiers,” he snapped, feeling his cheeks flush as neither of them made a move to obey; instead, they kept staring at his interface array with the same hungry look at the Seeker who had left. “Jetstorm, Jetfire! I say, optics up!”

“Why, Mister Sentinel? We not be minding the sight,” Jetfire stated plainly.

“What the…? Don’t make me report you,” he threatened, optics widening as they just looked at each other fondly and chuckled.

Something was wrong there. Very wrong. “Untie me,” the Prime said hoarsely, wriggling his wrists and trying to sit up.

Trying being the key word, because four hands were quick to push him back down to make him lie flat on the floor.

“No, no, Mister Sentinel Prime,” Jetfire tutted.

“You be staying on the ground,” Jetstorm nodded. “Be easier.”

“Easier?” Sentinel repeated dumbly. “Easier for wh…?”

He didn’t finish his sentence.

Out of the blue, Jetstorm jerked forward and caught his lips with his.

Sentinel’s CPU stalled abruptly as it tried to process what was happening.

Jetstorm. Has his lips. On him. Jetstorm. Was. Kissing. Him. Jetstorm was kissing him. Jetstorm was _kissing him_ \-- and _trying to slip his glossa into his mouth while he was at it_!

Sentinel jerked, throwing his head back, unlocking his lips from the blue flying Autobot, who whined. “Me not kissing good, Mister Sentinel?” he asked piteously. Jetfire rumbled briefly, flashing Sentinel a grin as he cuddled against him, a hand still wrapped around the base of the Prime’s spike.

“Told you I be better kisser, brother,” he taunted, getting a light shove for his trouble.

“You not be,” Jetstorm argued. “I be kissing you better next, Mister Sentinel,” he vowed fervently, turning his bright visor toward the Prime.

“I don’t care about the kissing!” Sentinel snapped, Spark surging. “And you release my spike, soldier! _That’s an order!_ ” he snapped, wriggling to get away from the two flying Autobots. Sadly, he didn’t get far, both mechs just shrugging it off and rubbing themselves against him with little pleased sighs. Jetfire hadn’t released his spike; worse, Jetstorm had wrapped his hand over his brother’s adding a little bit of pressure that made Sentinel shudder.

Frag, he thought faintly. He didn’t know what their malfunction was, but the Twins weren’t responding to his orders at all. Whatever it was, it was probably linked to that weird purplish color their optics and visor had taken, and the way they kept saying that ::Trine:: word, as if it held some grand significance that totally escaped Sentinel.

Was it some type of Decepticon quirk facing off the femme had awakened? Or… was it something else? 

Whatever the reason, that was… that was bad, he thought dimly as they started to _pump_ his spike slowly, making him moan aloud. Damn those scientists; Sentinel was certain they had messed up! They **always** messed up! That was why they needed a better equipped military to clean up their errors!

“You… you stop that… right now!” he tried to insist, only to receive two blank looks of incomprehension for his trouble. “I’m not… I’m not kiddiiiiiing!” he shouted as Jetfire suddenly bent down and wrapped his mouth around the tip of his spike and _sucked_.

“Better, Mister Sentinel?” Jetstorm asked with a bright smile. “You not worry, we wash out the taint soon,” he promised.

“What… what taint?” Sentinel gasped as Jetfire’s glossa run over the split of his spike. “I’m not…”

“She _touched_ you,” Jetstorm said darkly, visor becoming a deeper purple. “We smell her on you. Saw her hands. Saw her _fluids_. Is taint.”

Jetfire let go of his spike with an audible pop and looked up at him, crouched between Sentinel’s legs. “No right to _touch_ you. You’re ::Trine::. **Ours** ,” he claimed in the same dark tone as his brother.

“ **Ours** ,” Jetstorm echoed. “We be removing taint. Make you smell _right_. Show everyone you is ::Trine::. Taken. Not theirs, never theirs, and especially not **hers** ,” he added, sounding self-righteous.

They leaned against each other, sharing the same creepy smile. “We be ::CLAIMING:: you.”

Sentinel could only stare, dumbfounded. He didn’t understand half the things the two young mechs were sprouting right now, from saying he was apparently theirs to the ::Trine:: bit to the ::Claiming:: (what a weird-aft accent and hissing), but given the way their EM field reeked of desire and lust and Jetfire’s attempt at sucking him off, Jetstorm’s earlier kissing and the way he was now eyeing his mouth speculatively…

“The Pit you’re fragging me!” he snapped. “Now release me! Else you’ll be in big trouble, mark my words! But I… will be magnanimous and not mention anything that had happened here in my report if you remove my bonds right now,” he added, looking between the Twins, trying to see if it was making them react.

To his dread… it didn’t. The two flying mechs just blinked at him, looked at each other, then shrugged. Jetfire’s mouth engulfed Sentinel’s spike again, taking him _deeper_ and he keened. He tried to kick once, only for the orange Twin to move and grab his knees with a surprising strength. “Jetfire! Snap out of it! I don’t… I don’t… ooooooooh,” he moaned, trying to kick once more – but this time, it was more a reflex over the pleasurable sensation spreading from his spike to the rest of his body than to push him off.

He could practically _taste_ the amusement and the **smugness** of both brothers as their EM field rippled over him. Amusement, smugness… and lust. Its intensity made him shudder – unless it was the way Jetfire has started to let his dental plates brush against his spike.

“Feels good, doesn’t it, Mister Sentinel Prime?” Jetstorm hushed, moving to straddle Sentinel’s chest. “Brother is _good_ with mouth. But you be better, Mister Sentinel Prime; I know you be.” Sentinel blushed as he felt _wetness_ brush against his plating. A quick look down only confirmed that Jetstorm had _retracted his panel_ and that he was rubbing his _bare valve_ all over Sentinel.

“What… what do you think…?” he whizzed out between two small moans as Jetfire intensified his effort over his spike. Slag, even that slagging Decepticon femme hadn’t sucked him off like that! And unlike her, Jetfire was making no sign he intended to stop anytime soon. The lingering charge in his systems wasn’t helping any, making the Prime acutely aware of how sensitive his interface array still was.

The blue twin grinned, putting his hands on each side of Sentinel’s head. “Brother has mouth on you; you be having your mouth on me, yes? Please, Mister Sentinel,” he purred. “ _Want_ you. _Need_ you.” His visor darkened slightly as he stiffened. “Need **us** , not _trespasser femme_ ,” he hissed, moving forward and sitting over Sentinel’s face in a swift, final move.

“Mmmmpp! Jet… mmmphhh!” Sentinel choked, optics wide as Jetfire pressed his bare valve against his lips and started rocking his hips back and forth, whining as Sentinel’s failed to lick him and eat out his valve.

“You be not liking my valve, Mister Sentinel?” he asked, still rocking his hips. “You be liking my spike in your mouth instead?” His visor brightened; getting his spike sucked by Mister Sentinel Prime sounded delightful – and a much better way to claim back Mister Sentinel Prime and get rid of the scent and the marks the _trespasser_ had left on his ::Trinemate::.

He wanted Mister Sentinel Prime’s mouth on him; it didn’t matter how.

Sentinel, though, definitely thought it _did_.

Him, spike-sucking one of his _subordinates_? The slag he was doing that! Sentinel didn’t _do_ spike sucking, thank you very much!

(Except, maybe, this one time with Optimus, because he had been curious and Elita had dared him and it had been _Optimus_ , who had least could be discreet about those matters… and it didn’t count!)

His mind raced as he considered his (very limited) options. It was clear by this point the Twins couldn’t be reasoned with; Sentinel had no idea what had trigger their… argh, he wasn’t even certain how to define it! ‘Amorous’ was too weak, ‘possessive’ was putting it mildly, ‘horny’ didn’t even cover it all. Whatever. They had never acted like they wanted to _frag_ Sentinel before, that much the Prime had faith. Really, he’d have noticed if they had…

… Oh.

They had offered to help him clean up in the washracks, hadn’t they? And they kept shoving each other off to deliver report, eagerly awaiting his praises for a job well-done – which they usually did. There had been the cubes of energon they had bought to his desk, too, without prompting, and the fussing over that sprained wrist during training…

The two flying Autobots had developed a crush on him, and Sentinel hadn’t noticed.

Well… slag, he thought desperately as Jetstorm continued to rock his hips above him, pressing his valve against his lips more insistently. “Mister Sentinel…” he purred. Around Sentinel’s spike, Jetstorm hummed, making the bigger mech twitch.

Try to gain time, the Prime convinced himself, tentatively opening his mouth and letting his glossa poke out to give Jetstorm’s valve a lick, making the blue flyer trill. His valve folds were already soaked wet, Sentinel realized. Uh. He wasn’t the only one running a charge, was he?

Has he absentmindedly gave a few unenthusiastic licks, he tried to make further sense of what was happening.

The Twins had a crush on him. The Twins had freaked out about the damn femme Seeker putting her hands on him. Logically, they should have, what? Untied him, fussed and cried over him and swore revenge on the damn ‘Con who had dared to ‘harm’ him? Except, seeing the femme… molesting… him seemed to have switched their gears in another direction entirely, making them pick up where the femme had left him.

When put like that, it seemed clear – but it still didn’t make sense! No self-respecting Autobot would have done something like that!

… At least he hoped.

But, he reminded himself, the Twins weren’t _pure Autobots_. Their flying ability came from Decepticon coding, _warframe_ coding, and a few times in the simulator had shown that it came with its quirks, even if Perceptor and Wheeljack had made all they could to damper them.

And they had probably missed something; that’s perfectly explain why the Twins’ optics had taken that color, or why they were acting like horny, crazed mechs, and Sentinel was going to rip the entire Ministry of Sciences’ a new exhaust port the moment he managed to get in contact with them because it was _their slagging job to avoid potential issues like that and they had sworn the whole flying Autobots deal was safe!_

“Oooooh, Mister Sentinel, more, please!” Jetstorm whined. He was quivering, a hand wrapped around the base of his spike, stroking it. Sentinel had the taste of his lubricant on his glossa, a mix of sweet with sour tang that was not unpleasant. The blue flyer’s EM field was flashing with happiness under its strange vindicative echoes.

It was off-putting to say the least. Sentinel groaned and jerked upward, mouth digging further into Jetstorm’s valve as Jetfire did _something_ with his glossa that almost sent him over the edge. At this rhythm, he wasn’t going to last long.

… Did he even want to last long?

True, he didn’t _want_ to interface with the Twins, even if the sudden realization they might have harbored a crush on him for some time now was part stunning and part ego-stroking (ah! He knew he was an irresistible mech!); perhaps, if the circumstances had been different…

But he just had a bad time with the Seeker who had just manipulated him into satisfying her base, vile needs and he was in absolute _no mood_ to have a repeat. What’s to say the Twins wouldn’t dump him when they’d be back to their senses (assuming, of course, that they did come back to their senses)?

Plus, the Twins were his subordinates and Sentinel drew a line about _those_ kinds of relationships and its entanglements.

… Usually.

Right now, he didn’t think he had much of a choice.

And, as shameful as it was… something about having the two of them wrapped all over him, _touching_ him, felt **right** in a way he couldn’t explain with words. It was just… Instinct, perhaps. They were Autobots; of course Sentinel would feel safer with them than with a Decepticon clone, dubious situation or not.

That had to be it and not some weird kink he didn’t know about himself… right?

This was all terribly embarrassing… and strangely arousing.

Something in Sentinel… _cave in_. As if it had only waited for his processor to recognize that being between the Twins was **right** before the Prime shrugged the improperness off.

He’d have words with the Twins later, of course – he’d be remiss and a poor Officer if he didn’t address their misconduct and their molestation of a superior, even if they weren’t in their right mind (and Sentinel might not be either by this point). But Sentinel was going to save the bulk of his wrath for the Ministry of Sciences, he decided. He’d even be magnanimous and not fill a formal complaint against the Twins; he’d just put them through several megacycles worth of transform up and intense flying practice and obstacle courses and training from the Pit.

There, that was nice of him, wasn’t it?

Then they would all do their best to ignore what had just happened between them and resume their normal, standard relationship of a Prime and his mechs, where the two underlings were practically worshiping the Prime.

(He could get used to that kind of worship too… maybe… why should his frame fight it anyway? It was only ::normal::…)

In the meanwhile… well, time to show the two flying Autobots he wasn’t bad with his glossa, was he?

Sentinel opened his mouth wider, mapping the lips of Jetstorm’s valve while his glossa run across the calipers. The blue flyer cried out in pleasure. “Oh, Mister Sentinel! Again! Again, please!” He grinded his array harder against the Prime’s face, who groaned a bit, feeling lubricant coat his face. Jetstorm really was in a mood, wasn’t he? And Jetfire mustn’t have been much better…

Was he going to want and ride Sentinel’s spike like the femme Seeker did?

The thought almost made him come on the spot, imagining those yellow optics wide with pleasure and delight as he bounced over his spike, calling out his name in rapture as he overloaded…

“Mmmmphh!” he moaned, glossa flickering over Jetstorm’s anterior node as he felt transfluid start to trickle down from his slit, only to be eagerly lapped away by Jetfire’s glossa.

“You be tasting so good, Mister Sentinel,” he slurred, letting go of Sentinel’s shaft while his hands spread the Prime’s thighs further apart. Sentinel tensed minutely, mindful of his bare valve; surely, Jetfire didn’t intend to…?

“That good, brother?” Jetstorm asked, looking over his shoulder, one hand still wrapped around his own spike. He leaned back while Jetfire stretched forward and upward until he was close enough to kiss his brother. Their glossas mingled as they deepened their kiss and Jetstorm moaned as he _tasted_ Mister Sentinel Prime on his Twin’s lips and glossa. There was a tang of something _other_ , a leftover of the _trespasser_ they hadn’t gotten rid of yet, but their own taste was starting to wash it away, which pleased them both. “Oh,” he whispered as the kiss broke. “So good. You be having the best taste ever, Mister Sentinel,” he proclaimed, shifting to free the Prime’s face. “Best glossa,” he said.

“Best spike,” Jetfire nodded eagerly, wrapping hand around it and giving it a tug, making Sentinel groan.

“Best everything,” both brothers proclaimed at the same time. “Best ::Trinemate::!” they finished together.

Well, wasn’t that great someone was praising his equipment, Sentinel thought, part sour, part amused and part vindicated. He raised his head a bit, trying to peer at Jetfire past the frame of his brother, but the angle wasn’t good. He could still feel his hands, hot and steady, holding his thighs apart. “R… right,” he stammered, cheeks flushed. His spike was throbbing; Jetfire had let go before Sentinel overloaded, which painfully reminded him of the way that _femme_ had treated him. He tried to wriggle a bit, but Jetfire only tightened his hold.

“Making you feel good, Mister Sentinel? Better than _trespasser_ , yes?” the orange Twin asked eagerly, while Jetstorm was looking down at him with a large grin.

It made Sentinel swallow nervously. “W… Why, yes. Better, much better,” he said, hesitating a bit over what he should say or do before straightening – or at least as much as his position allowed him to. “But I feel neglected, soldier. I haven’t overloaded yet,” he said, channeling all he could of his natural authority and drill sergeant experience. “Aren’t you going to finish what you started with my spike?”

Both brothers exchanged a look that Sentinel couldn’t quite see, seeming to silently communicating between them.

“Your spike be for brother,” Jetfire finally said with an air of finality, though he looked mournfully at the Prime’s erected spike. Oh, but he _wanted_ it more, to suck and to ride and to touch and to caress and play with while Mister Sentinel would make the cutest little sounds… But he was going to get another prize instead, and one just as sweet. “Me be having your valve instead,” he finished, optics shining brightly as he looked at Mister Sentinel’s array, the folds still stained with the lubricant that had slipped past the lips when the _trespasser_ had fingered him.

Bitch was going to burn when he saw her again, he thought darkly. Slipping her dirty fingers into his ::Trinemate:: like that… But that was alright now, because Jetfire and his brother had Mister Sentinel Prime now, and they wouldn’t let the _stain_ of the trespasser remain. They were ::Claiming:: Mister Sentinel Prime now, everything the _trespasser_ had dared to touch. Mouth, spike, valve. Part of Jetfire wished they could claim it together with his brother, perhaps join and become one to better take and leave their mark, but Jetstorm didn’t want it as much.

**Later** , his brother had promised, and Jetfire reluctantly agreed. Their combined form was… complicated. It wasn’t… It wasn’t ::Trine::, although it kinda _was_ , too, because it was a combination of them and their desire and it was entitled to share their ::Trinemate:: too… but THEY were the ::Trine:: first, so it made sense they ::Claimed:: Mister Sentinel properly first before doing anything involving Safeguard.

And there would be plenty of opportunities, too, once they were properly ::Trine::. He could see it already in his mind; brother riding Mister Sentinel Prime while Jetfire himself would slip his spike into his mouth. Brother and him _both_ burying themselves into Mister Sentinel Prime’s valve at the same time. Mister Sentinel Prime fingering both of them together while they kissed each other, all three of them, and they had their hands wrapped around his spike…

So many possibilities, it was almost dizzying.

And if Mister Sentinel Prime seemed offput right now… well, he’d be smiling too when they were all ::Trine::.

“Wait… wait a klik here!” Sentinel sputtered. “I may not disagreed with getting my spike sucked or having one of you two ride me,” he started, “but I do not… Ack!” he wheezed as Jetfire buried his face between his thighs and went straight to _suck on his anterior node_!

At the same time, Jetstorm had moved, rising up and coming down to let his valve – his wet, dripping valve that Sentinel had so prettily eaten before – hover just above his erect spike, giggling. Brother was going to take good care of Mister Sentinel’s valve. And Jetstorm was going to have _fun_ , getting his ::Trinemate:: acquainted with his own valve. It would be much, much better than the _trespasser_ ’s he just knew it!

With a simple roll of his hips, he lowered himself onto that wonderful spike, moaning and groaning as he felt it stretch him. The head first, then the shaft, bit by bit as Mister Sentinel Prime groaned and sputtered and said things he didn’t meant, Jetstorm knew he didn’t. His systems were running hot and Mister Sentinel’s had made him wet(ter) by licking him, but that hadn’t been nearly as much preparation as he needed – not that Jetstorm was in any shape to truly _care_. His coding ruled him, and his coding was intent on him finishing to properly ::Claim:: Mister Sentinel. So what if he should have been stretched more before taking the Prime’s girth? It didn’t _hurt_ , hurt; it was just a tingle of discomfort that was washed away by the pleasure of knowing he had Mister Sentinel Prime _inside him_ now, and that he was going to ride him again and again ‘til sweet overload, his and Mister Sentinel’s.

Jetfire was, for his part, giddy as he felt and saw his brother lowering himself on Mister Sentinel’s spike. Mister Sentinel Prime’s hips buckled as he shot himself upward, overtaken by the stimuli to both part of his array. His tiny node was swollen and throbbing under Jetfire’s glossa while his fingers teased the folds of the Prime’s valve apart. They weren’t yet as swollen and wet as he wished, but that was only a question of time. He had full confidence in his abilities of bringing his ::Trinemate:: to overload in swift order. His fingers slide deeper into the Prime’s valve, past the ring of calipers that flexed around them obediently. Mister Sentinel Prime was _tight_ , so tight! He needed to become looser and wetter and hotter if Jetfire hoped to sink his spike inside him.

It was already so hard as it grinded against the floor while he prepared Mister Sentinel Prime for him…

Sentinel, for his part, could only groan and moan, because it was _too much_. The assaults against both his spike and valve threatened to send him over the edge every passing klik. His mind still balked at the thought of getting spiked, but… well, perhaps not as much as he would have been a cycle before. The way Jetfire toyed with his valve was gradually arousing him. He could feel his walls flexing around the fingers inside him as they scissored him open.

Slag, when had he last…?

“Ooooh, yeah, like that,” he groaned as he felt Jetstorm’s valve ripple around him. “Jet… Jetstorm… I’m going to…!”

Transfluid shoot up from his spike before he had even finished to speak and Jetstorm crowed in triumph before rolling his hips, riding Sentinel with more eagerness while Jetfire growled as his brother gave him a smug look over his shoulder.

Not fair! He wanted to make Mister Sentinel overload too!

Brother could play smug because he had had the first one, but Jetfire could have had it too, if he had continued to just suck on their ::Trinemate::’s spike like he had done at first.  
Well, time to correct that.

Judging it was enough, he stopped sucking on the Prime’s anterior node and went to his knees as he removed his fingers from Mister Sentinel’s twitching, rippling valve and wrapped them around his spike, spreading the lubricant all over him.

“Going to make you feel soooo good, Mister Sentinel,” he swore as he lined up his spike with the bigger mech’s valve and started to press the head against the folds, watching in delight as they parted and he felt himself press against the ring of calipers.

“Ah… ah! Jet… Jetfire!” the Prime mumbled while brother kept riding him – his spike hadn’t softened yet, Jetfire was pleased to notice. Mister Sentinel Prime had plenty of endurance, that was good. They’d have much fun together, lots more fun.

“So good,” he promised, chuckling as Jetstorm leaned back and twisted so they could share a kiss, lips pressed together for the briefest of time before they parted and the blue flyer went back to smile and coo and whisper praises and encouragements to Mister Sentinel Prime.

And with a roll of his lips, the orange mech sunk himself in.

*-*-*-*-*-*

“You still can’t get through?” Optimus asked worriedly and Jazz could only shake his head in denegation, grimacing.

Slag, he hoped the Twins weren’t in trouble.

… Scratch that, he inwardly sighed. He hoped the Twins weren’t _causing trouble_. The black and white mech was privately crossing his digits so that they were actually fighting someone and not doing… what he suspected they were doing right now.

Fat chance of that, though, because he had _seen_ the Decepticon Seeker soar through the sky while he and Optimus were reaching the foot of the mountain. Unless she had left accomplices behind to occupy the Jettwins, which Jazz doubted because Optimus’ reports indicated that ‘Slipstream’ was a loner with no known associates.

Which was weird, because she was a _Seeker_ too…

Then again, she was a Starscream’s _clone_ ; of course the crafty slagger had found a way to keep the blocks in place on her, Jazz thought bitterly as he watched Optimus take aim and shoot his grapples upward.

Those grappling hooks were an Allspark-blessed mod given the situation. Thank to them, Jazz and Optimus were progressing by leap and bounces and were almost at the entry of the cavern they had noticed earlier. Too bad Optimus had only two of them and that they would only support that much weight; as a result, Bulkhead was struck at the bottom, waiting for Prowl and Bumblebee to arrive, while Ratchet was doing his own, slower version of climbing, using his hands, feet and tools (and a liberal amount of cursing).

Jazz wished he had been able to convince them to stay behind. But you couldn’t stop a medic when there might be one or several injured, and you couldn’t stop a Prime from leading a rescue effort either – especially when one of the potential causalities was a friend of his (even if the friendship was of the sour-kind).

“I’ll try again,” he just mumbled as he tightened his arms around Optimus’ neck while the red and blue truck lifted them both. But he already knew it was in vain; it wasn’t that the Twins’ comm links were blocked or anything of the sort that could imply they were unconscious or injured.

It was simply that they… weren’t picking up.

Not good. Not good at all. Maybe he should warn Optimus right away…

But he had orders and honestly, how the Pit could he succinctly explain what was going on _now_? Would Optimus even believe him? So he said nothing, even as they slowly made their way into the cavern, checking for traps – or worse, tell-tales signs of battle, spilt energon and burnt marks left by lasers.

There was none to be found.

Jazz saw Optimus sigh in relief but he himself didn’t allow himself to be reassured just yet. Just because there hadn’t been a battle here didn’t meant there hadn’t been one further.  
And if there had been no battle at all… then _what the Pit had happened here_?

“Aren’t you hearing… moaning?” Optimus asked, optic ridges furrowed as they progressed further in the cavern. The Prime had his battleax at the ready, the energon blade emitting a faint glow, while Jazz held up his laser-nunchaku, shoulders tense.

“… sounds like it,” he replied flatly. Slag, slag, slag, he mentally cursed.

That was really happening, wasn’t it?

He coughed uncertainly, “Optimus,” he started, “maybe it’d be best if we waited here.”

The other mech stilled. “Wait? Why should we _wait_?!” he exclaimed in disbelief. “Sentinel and the Twins are here, they might be injured…”

Jazz winced. “Uh… it’s not exactly… The moaning we’re hearing? Dunno how good your audios are, but… it’s not exactly the pained kind, if you’re catching my meaning.”

There. He had said it. And now maybe Optimus would stay put and they could both sit here because it was obvious there was no danger and they would wait for Ratchet and _thenConsensual?_ Sentinel is tied down!”

“Maybe he likes that?” Jazz offered, only for Optimus’ flat look to become incensed.

“Jazz,” he said coldly, “I have known Sentinel for thousands of stellar cycles and I can reasonably states _a lot of things_ about his personal preferences, be it in term of fuel, wax, polish and _yes_ , it does include interfacing! I **know** he dislike being restrained, I **know** he would never frag on the _slagging floor_ if his life depended on it, and I **know** he dislikes being fragged in the valve, unless it’s by **Elita-One** , _whom he intended to Conjunx with_! So unless he had a radical personality change in the last orn, **no, I do not believe for a klik it’s anything _consensual_ going on here!**”

He had grabbed his axe back and was now moving, seeming intent on using it on the Twins and Jazz had to grab his arm and shove himself in his way.

“OP, my mech, please, wait!” he asked desperately. “I swear it’s not what you think! They’re not… It’s not their fault!” he blurted out.

Optimus gave him a venomous look (wow, he didn’t know the blue and red mech had it in him; he looked very intimidating like that), still holding his axe’s handle so strongly Jazz could practically hear his gears creak from the strain. “Yes? And whose is it, exactly, then?” he asked mildly.

Sentinel moaned loudly and Optimus twitched.

“Damnit, Jazz!” he snapped. “What is going on here?!”

The Cyberninja rubbed the back of his helm with a sheepish smile and carefully kept his back to the trio of mechs making out on the floor.

“Ah, that… it’s a pretty long story? But I swear I can explain. We, uh, we may just need to uh, wait for them to be done and bring them back to base? And then, we may need to call the Ministry of Sciences…”

Optimus blinked, then slowly rubbed a hand over his face. “Why,” he said slowly, “am I not even remotely surprised?”

*-*-*-*-*-*

“So… Mind telling me exactly WHY we stumbled on two of the Elite Guard’s newest, most promising recruits literally **assaulting** their superior officer? And why, exactly, I shouldn’t take my axe and cleanly break their respective helm in two?”

Jazz tried very hard not to wince at Optimus’ tone; the Prime’s voice sounded amiable enough for those who didn’t know him, but the stormy look in his optics and the dry edge of his words meant another story altogether. Plus, he was actually _threatening_ the Twins, which was waaaay out of characters from him.

If looks could kill, Perceptor (and Wheeljack, who was hanging back and wiggling his hands nervously, not a fool) would have been deactivated already, even thousands of lightyears away. There was only so much a video call could protect you from, after all, and irate Prime incensed on the behalf of a friend was one of them. And not just any friend, but an actual _Amica Endura_.

Which, honestly, had taken Jazz by surprise, ‘cause given their current relationship, the Cyberninja would have never pegged OP and SP as close enough once upon a time to declare themselves so. Or to still be officially listed as each other emergency contact, period. Sentinel had never stuck him as the sentimental kind, so it was perhaps more due to Optimus’ inclination if they had kept the legally-formed partnership on paper. Perhaps he had hoped to somehow fix-up their relationship at some point? That, or he was more masochistic than Jazz had given him credit for.

Anyway.

Wheeljack may have gotten how serious it was, but Perceptor? Oh man, Perceptor was still looking flatly at them from his side of the screen, completely unbothered. If Jazz ever found out who had given their lead-scientist the go-ahead to mess up with his emotional subroutines, he would have a long conversation with them, possibly with a primed weapon in hand. Because Perceptor DIDN’T see anything wrong with the whole scenario they were locked in, and it showed.

It was already a minor miracle that Jazz has managed to convince him to allow Optimus and Ratchet to be present for the debrief. Perceptor had quoted secrecy and Science Ministry policies and the top secret nature of Project Safeguard, Jazz had thrown at him Right To Know for next of kin in case of harm to friend/family, which was part of the Autobot Code, as well as being given appropriate medical treatment by medical staff. Plus, Ratchet was _technically_ allowed insight into several project of the Ministry of Sciences thank to his role in the War and his status as an Omega Sentinel’s mentor.

That was that last point that had had Perceptor cave in, finally bowing to some ‘logic’.

Well, that, plus warning him that Acting Magnus Rodimus might not be impressed by poor handling of the situation, and Optimus Prime filling an official complaint against the Twins AND the Ministry of Sciences as well as SENTINEL filling a complaint too would be considered very, _very_ poor handling. The kind of poor handling that ended up with irate superiors and resulted in them, oh, cutting the funds to various other projects and butting in to know exactly what they were doing when unsupervised.

Ultra Magnus would have been willing to shutter his optics for promising good results and stayed out of it on the promise such incidents would never repeat; Rodimus would **not**.  
Perceptor had not much left in term of emotional range, but he understood shanix was necessary for Science to happen.

Thus why he had finally allowed this ultra-secure video conference, with limited presence. Jazz, because he had known some (and oh boy, did Optimus give him dirty looks for that), Optimus, because as Sentinel’s Amica and a witness of the incident and the ruling Autobot authority on this planet, there was no way to keep him out, and Ratchet, because…

Well, you don’t say ‘no’ to the doctor who patched up the mess. He was currently gloomy but silent, staring at Perceptor and Wheeljack with the same burning optics at Optimus, and his expression was a lot less kind.

Jazz tentatively glanced behind him, to the couch Sentinel was sitting in, the Twins curled up on each side of him, deep in recharge and hanging on his arms. The Prime wasn’t glaring at him, but his closed off expression wasn’t much better. He looked very unhappy and nervous about his current position, but any attempt at detaching the Twins from his frame tended to result in bites, snapped jaws and death glares, and nobody really wanted to start a fight.

(Well, Jazz didn’t; Optimus… he still hadn’t let go of his axe’s handle, which was answer enough.)

There was no separating ‘Mister Sentinel Prime’ and the two flyers until further notice, which did little to sooth the ruffed processors of everyone. Sentinel, especially, had flushed cheeks and looked torn between shaking the Twins off or hugging them close to his frame, which honestly puzzled him. He had stayed very silent so far, which was rather out of character for him.

Probably not wanting to admit as to _what_ had happened to him before the Twins got to him, Jazz supposed. Getting… molested by the Twins was one thing. Getting molested by a ‘Con was another entirely. Mech would need therapy, Jazz thought grimly.

If it had truly been molestation, for which Jazz held some private doubts. Ratchet may have refused to show him Sentinel’s medical chart, but Jazz was sneaky and had gotten his hands on it anyway, plus the tentative reports Sentinel had started to put together before scrapping them and a few things weren’t completely adding up.

The Cyberninja wouldn’t judge. There had been… a lot of special cases, during the War, some of them involving his fellow Dojo students. Jazz wasn’t going to point at Sentinel and howl ‘Traitor!’ if he went and got himself briefly seduced by a Decepticon. Starscream had been known to pull that kind of thing, once upon a time and Jazz himself had almost…

But it was long past, the black and white mech reminded himself as he tried to stop looking at Sentinel. He wasn’t quite successful, though, optics frequently sliding in his direction, gaze alternating between the blue mech and the two flying Autobots.

They looked very innocent, curled up and recharging like they did. And they mostly were. You couldn’t exactly blame them for errant coding they hadn’t even been warned about, thank to prissy mechs deciding it wasn’t a big enough issue to worry about.

And now, Sentinel was stuck in the middle of this mess.

Jazz sympathized, really. If he had been in his position… And he at least had known what to expect, more or less. Sentinel didn’t even have this courtesy, for which Jazz could only curse and blame himself. He should have insisted for Perceptor to put the Prime in the secret, if only to soften the blow. But since when did they listen to simple Agents? Pity the thought…

“It would be very counterproductive,” Perceptor stated plainly, looking at Optimus with a flat expression from the other side of the screen.

“Perceptor, Sir, with all due respect, I don’t think it’s a good argument,” Jazz said prudently, side-eyeing Optimus while Ratchet scoffed.

“Oh, do not bother being polite with him, Jazz. Perceptor has no Spark and no concept of other people’s feelings. All he’s interested in are his damn results,” Ratchet said bitterly.

“Hey, no need to be like that,” Wheeljack interjected, pushing Perceptor on the side to face the monitor. “Percy do care; he’s just… not very good at showing it,” he tried, vocal indicator flashing. “And that’s really not what we’re here for. Sentinel Prime? May I ask how you feel?”

The blue mech lifted him helm from where he was sitting, carefully not jostling the two flyers. “I found myself dealing with amorous subordinates out of the blue after a Decepticon apparently triggered _something_ in them, _something_ you apparently knew could happen but didn’t see fit to warn me about; how do you _think_ I feel?” he asked, left optic twitching.

Wheeljack had the good grace to look chastised, while Optimus looked like he wanted to walk over Sentinel and squeeze his shoulder in comfort but thought better of it. Probably for the best; if he got too close, his EM field would rouse the twins, and they didn’t need it now.

“I am sorry,” Wheeljack said, and he sounded sincere – except sincere wouldn’t quite cut it here, Jazz thought. “It’s true, we should have given you forewarning. But in our defense, we had truly hoped Jetstorm and Jetfire would focus their attention on _Jazz_ , as the signs we had were mixed, and we were working on finding a solution before the Trine coding became an issue.”

“Trine coding,” Ratchet repeated, looking troubled. “I think I’ve heard of it, but I thought it was a myth? Medical texts hinted it was, anyway.”

“It seems it’s not so much a myth as a carefully held secret of Seeker in-depth programming,” Perceptor stated.

“Oh, secret, secret,” Wheeljack waved a hand. “I don’t think it’s a ‘secret’ per se, I just think we purged too much data on warframes from our systems – and that Megatron probably did the same during the war to leave us blind. Results are the same, though; we practically forgot it was a _real_ thing until we studied coding strands from Jetfire and Jetstorm and realized their exact purpose.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Optimus interjected, optics furrowed. “I read about Trines during the Great War. They were a military formation, weren’t they? Seekers worked in Trines to attack and defend and just fly. It was reasoned that acting in three provided covering for one’s wingmates through firefights and that it added to security in number.” He looked at Sentinel. “We had a question about it during our first Academy vorn’s exams, hadn’t we?”

“Yeah,” the blue Prime mumbled. “You helped me review that chapter; I remember. That femme… she said she wanted to try and convince Jetstorm and Jetfire to become her trine. That why she… used… me to lure them to her,” he said reluctantly.

“But the Twins rejected her offer and only focused on you,” Wheeljack nodded, sounding pleased, for which Jazz gave him a look; now wasn’t the time to be awed one of their hypothesis had been proved correct!

“To be focused, they were… focused,” Sentinel replied flatly. “The frag did happen?”

“A miscalculation on our part, I’m afraid,” Perceptor said, pushing his glasses up. “And another on the part of this errant Seeker. As Wheeljack mentioned, the Decepticon purged a lot of data relative to their functioning and their culture. Part of it concerned the Trine system Vosians and Seekers specifically operated under. While we chalked it up as a simple, preferred attack formation, it seems that the workings of a Trine was in fact structurally encoded in a Seeker’s behavior, as well as in various cultural aspects of a Seeker’s everyday life.”

He was pronouncing the word ‘culture’ with the most displeased expression he could muster, Jazz noted. It was funny – and kinda not at the same time.

“Basically, you’re saying Seekers **need** to have wingmates, preferably two so they have whole Trine, is that it?” Ratchet inquired, looking intent as he shared his attention between the screen and the sitting Sentinel and his armful of sleeping flying Autobots, looking at them in a new light. “And they don’t just want a wingmate to fly with; they want a _partner_ , in the intimate sense of the word.”

“I suppose it’s a correct way to present things for profanes,” Perceptor mused aloud, nodding to himself. “A Trine is composed of three individuals who share _everything_ , as we were able to discern from literature recovered by Intelligence and our own observations. As best as we can estimate, Jetfire and Jetstorm have been subconsciously on the look-out for a third mech for some time now, although we only realized so 8 orns ago, during a routine check-up which high lined the online coming for a new strand of code that had laid dormant until then. In that aspect, they’re not different from any Decepticon flyers.” He pushed his glasses up again.

“Wait a klik, wait a klik,” Optimus interjected, arms crossed over his chest (oh, good, Jazz noted, he had subspaced the axe, even if he still looked very, very unhappy with the whole mess; the Cyberninja couldn’t blame him. “Not any different from any Decepticon flyers? Starscream didn’t have a Trine, the last time I checked. There was no mention of him having one either for all duration of the war! And what does it even have to do with the Twins’ behavior?”

“Yeah!” Sentinel pipped in. “Why were they so… so… Why did they jump me when they never did before?!”

“Again, it is a Trine programming issue,” Perceptor stated.

“You see,” Wheeljack explained smoothly, giving Perceptor a look, “when we copied Starscream’s data and coding, we took everything we could, including strands and blocks and all sort of modifications he had installed in himself. We studied it before its eventual implantation in Project Safeguard’s test subjects… uh, in the Twins,” he amended quickly as everyone in the room gave the screen a dark look. “We needed to know what we were implanting, after all, yes? Some of Starscream’s modifications were easy to explain as we were able to match them with various bits of programming, useful or not, and as we dwelled deeper, we took the decision to either keep those modifications… or removing them.”

Ratchet swore under his breath. “Starscream had put a block on his own Trine coding, hadn’t he?” he guessed.

“Yeah,” Jazz sighed, shoulders slumping. “At least it’s what was summarized. Starscream is secretive, you know? But all records stated that he was a loner, which was rare for a flyer, especially a Seeker. We never thought much of it, because that didn’t seem like and issue, but… we saw the tree and missed the forest, like those organics say,” he shrugged.

“We can only speculate as to why he did so,” Perceptor continued in Wheeljack’s place. “It may have been an attempt at staying independent or being uninterested in following tradition and coding issues he may have found repulsive or which he feared would drag him down. What is certain is that, through careful edition of his coding and his firewalls, he resisted the urge to search for a Trine.”

“And since you didn’t know what _that one block_ was fixing and didn’t think it was a big issue since it didn’t seem to be dangerous, you removed it when you implanted that segment in the Twins, didn’t you?” Ratchet accused. “Damnit! That’s why you never, ever play fast and loose with coding! You of all mechs should have known better!”

“Eh, we didn’t just start implanting coding at random and hope for the best!” Wheeljack interjected, sounding outraged. “That one strand of coding was tested on Dexi-Squirrels before implantation in Project Safeguard’s recipients! We do use Cyber-guineapigs, you know,” he gave Ratchet a look. “But the Dexi-Squirrels showed no sign of anything being wrong, so we thought it was safe.”

“Dexi-Squirrels are social creatures, though,” Optimus pointed out. “They live in colonies and are constantly checking on each other and keep close ties with several partners. There was one living behind my habitation block when I was growing up, I spent a lot of time observing them,” he added when he received surprised looks, flushing.

“Nerd,” Sentinel grumbled, but it was affectionate – or at least, it wasn’t biting, which was already a big progress.

“I see,” Wheeljack tapped his facemask with a finger, sounding thoughtful. “That explains why we didn’t see a reaction sooner in them.”

“Because you saw one after all?” Ratchet asked between gritted dental plates.

“Indeed,” Perceptor nodded. “Around the same time as the Twins started to develop symptoms themselves, though from Optimus’ declaration, it is possible we missed earlier abnormal behavior shifts due to not knowing what was normal or not for a group of Dexi-Squirrels. Interesting.”

“That’s a way to say it,” Sentinel cut in. “Why did they jump me? You still haven’t answered!”

“Because someone else touched you, of course,” Perceptor replied blandly and Sentinel blanched.

“Mech, not cool,” Jazz snapped. Did they really need to bring it up for everyone to hear? Granted, everyone in this room _knew_ , but that didn’t meant it was an okay subject to talk about.

“Trines are… peculiar,” Wheeljack put in more diplomatically. “Understand that we’re working we fragmented information here, but from what we were able to discern… Trines aren’t always _mutually exclusive_ when it comes to taking, ah, intimate partners,” he coughed in his fist, “but members who stray with people who aren’t part of the Trine or who don’t have the whole Trine’s blessing need to be… well, they call it ‘Reclamation’. A Trine’s act of reaffirming their bonds and their proximity by way of interfacing, removing the ‘taint’ of a suitor that they see as a ‘trespasser’ and who encroached on their territory – their territory being their trinemate.”

“… What?” Sentinel said flatly.

“They’re saying that since that femme put her hands on you, they had to remove all traces of her from your frame and replace them with theirs,” Ratchet stated, rubbing his temples as if he was developing a migraine. Jazz wouldn’t have been surprised if he truly was. “Perfect. Just… perfect. Sentinel Prime? I hope you didn’t have a special someone on the side, because you can forget ever touching them without the Twins being right behind you and chasing them off before fragging you again.”

“Harsh,” Jazz let him known, shaking his head as Sentinel looked at them all with a stunned expression – a stunned expression Optimus shared.

“But true,” Ratchet pointed out. “Or am I wrong?” He asked Wheeljack and Perceptor, who were trading looks on their side of the screen.

“Not, it is accurate, though a bit cruder than I would have said,” Wheeljack sighed. “Honestly, Sentinel, I’m sorry about it. It really wasn’t planned.”

“I don’t care about planned or not,” the Prime snapped his helm up. “Can it be removed? That coding of them, can it be removed? Or blocked, or something?”

“Ah…” Wheeljack hesitated and Optimus was the one who swore.

“It can’t, can it?” he accused them, pointing a finger at the screen.

“So far, we haven’t managed to,” Perceptor indicated simply. “Once the coding is fully activated, we haven’t been able to put it back under control. It’s deeply ingrained in their systems by now, and ever more so since they have successfully Reclaimed you from an intruder.”

“We have attempted to reimplant Starscream’s blocks in their systems during their last check-up, but they didn’t work,” Wheeljack explained. “We’re not sure why. It could either be due to a spontaneous mutation of the Twins’ coding thank to their original ground-based forms, which in turn render the block inactive, or it may be due to an issue coming from Starscream’s original coding adapting itself to work past the blocks. Whatever the reasons, we still haven’t found a reliable way to remove that coding or stop it from affecting test subjects.”

“So you’re saying there is no easy fix and that Sentinel must accept the situation as it is?” Optimus asked in disbelief.

“Basically… yes?” Wheeljack tried.

“The Pit I will!” Sentinel shouted, jerking. In their sleep, the Twins made soft noises and hugged his arms tighter, making him still and look at them with wide optics. “You can’t expect me to… They’re my subordinates! It’s highly improper!”

“There is a good chance they picked you as their Trinemate _because_ you are their superior officer,” Perceptor stated. “Being Twins, they are probably subconsciously placing themselves on the same level of authority, meaning they would have been searching for a leader, an authority figure to command them. You fit the bill, Sentinel Prime.”

“Is that supposed to be a consolation?” the big-chinned mech groused.

“No, it’s an explanation,” Perceptor replied, oblivious.

“We do intend to find a solution, Sentinel Prime,” Wheeljack reassured him. “The reproduction of Project Safeguard depends on us fixing up any potential issues with the Jettwins and this errant need to search for a Trine is considered one.”

“Granted, it may easily be fixed by bringing up mechs with flying coding in group of three to form complete Trines from the very beginning, and High Command might decide that randomly picking an Officer of unshakable loyalty will only reinforce the flyers’ own desire to serve the Autobot Cause,” Perceptor continued. “Ultra Magnus might have found it a reasonable side-effect.”

“Pretty much sure Rodimus _won’t_ ,” Jazz mouthed at Sentinel, who looked ready to explode. It didn’t quite mollify him, but he gritted his dental plates instead of exploding, so it was better than nothing in the Cyberninja’s book.

“But we will search,” Wheeljack promised quickly. “You have my word on it. In the meanwhile…” he trailed off, coughing. “Well, I would advise that you tread carefully, Sentinel Prime. They now fully consider you Trine; they may, uh, have gestures of affection toward you that they didn’t have before. They _should_ respect consent boundaries, of course, unless they’re set off.”

“’Should respect consent boundaries’?” Optimus seethed. “That’s all you have to say?”

“We can’t offer more for now,” Perceptor stated matter-of-factly.

“That’s not nearly enough!” Optimus snapped angrily. “Bad enough they could assault Sentinel again—”

“I wasn’t assaulted!” Sentinel shouted, cheeks flushed.

“—but what about the Twins themselves? Of much consent to _they_ have in this whole mess, if it’s all down to coding issues?” Optimus continued.

“Interesting question,” Ratchet interjected. “Are they even responsible for their acts when they’re in this mindset? Are they even aware they may be doing something wrong?”

“It is… tricky to answer,” Wheeljack hesitated. “Dexi-Squirrels don’t _talk_ , so it’s not like they can give us testimonies over their experience. But perhaps with Sentinel…”

“Are you suggesting I act like one of your Cyber-guineapigs?” Sentinel sputtered indignantly.

“At this stage, Sentinel Prime, I think we’re _all_ Cyber-guineapigs,” Ratchet groused. “Aren’t we?” he asked defiantly to the screen before he pointed out to the various occupant of the room. “Optimus is an old friend of your – or frenemy or whatever, but you still have close emotional links to him, for better or worse; that may set them off. Jazz –” he pointed to the Cyberninja “—could have very well ended in your position, they’ll want to know _why_ he didn’t and what factored in the kids’ choice. I” he pointed at himself “am a medic, technically safe, but I’ll have to keep an optic on everyone and make observations AND if I hang too close to you, I could set them off too. Same with Bumblebee and Bulkhead, and Prowl too,” he listed on his fingers, shaking his head. “I don’t even want to know how an organic like Sari would register on their radar. And then there is you,” he looked at Sentinel in the optics. “You don’t have Trine coding, but that doesn’t mean being so closely linked with the Twins won’t start to affect you somehow, and they’ll also want to study _that_.”

He turned toward the screen and glared.

“Am I right?” he asked darkly, and received no answer. Only stunned looks from Optimus and Sentinel, who hadn’t seemed to consider it. Jazz, though… well, Jazz couldn’t say he was surprised. He knew how the Ministry of Sciences operated, after all.

No forthcoming answer after a klik was just as good as an admission and Jazz mentally cursed. Well, wasn’t that great?

“I don’t see how it could even affect…” Sentinel started to say, only for Ratchet to cut him off.

“Yeah? How come you haven’t shaken the Twins off by now?” he asked.

“Well because… because…” Sentinel started before trailing off, looking at lost for words as he looked down at the recharging, smiling Twins with an off-put expression. “Oh, slag,” he whispered, as if realizing suddenly that his current calm was **not** a good thing.

“My point exactly,” Ratchet said. “That’s why you sent them on Earth too, didn’t you?” he accused Wheeljack and Perceptor. “We’re a damn control group, well out of the way, with no risk of damaging precious installations if something goes wrong.”

“… It may have been a contributing factor,” Wheeljack reluctantly confirmed, and Jazz felt his shoulders sag. “Which reminds me Agent Jazz? This team is not scheduled for a return to Cybertron before 6 orns, with potential additional mission time. The Space Bridge network and Cybertron’s aerial defenses were already advised. Passage will be granted in case of emergency, but said emergency will first need to be validated by the Ministry of Sciences.”

Jazz gave Wheeljack a look. Now he said that. Damn. He usually liked Wheeljack. Sure, the mech was sometimes a little too enthusiastic about his project, but he was _friendly_ and unlike Perceptor who had a serious problem relating to anyone who wasn’t a test subject (not that he did either), Wheeljack _understood people_.

That he was stranding Jazz, Sentinel and the Jettwins like that was out of character for him, and the black and white mech wondered what the other mech wasn’t saying. Just how badly their tests on blocking Trine bonds had gone? Or was someone on the High Council pulling strings? Alpha Trion and the Guilds Domesticus had the high hand right now, and Rodimus was a lot more open about military secrets and needs than Ultra, but there were still plenty of old war dogs in the ranks who really wished for more flying Autobots and who wanted them _now_ , consequences be damned.

Those mechs usually had plenty of money, too. Eh, how much would you like a donation to research that one project, or hire more people? The Ministry of Sciences always needed more personnel, more chemical, more material, more test subjects, more secured labs.

Sentinel’s little stint as Acting Magnus had scrambled their budget to high hell and Jazz wasn’t certain they had fully recovered. Assuming someone was taking advantage of the chaos to further their own agenda…

And if they needed to isolate a group of mechs to better study their current flyer models and their behavior before presenting their case to Rodimus and assure the Acting Magnus it was safe to create more flying Autobots… Yeah, Jazz could see it.

Pissed him off, but he could see it.

“That would have been nice to know about this part too, mech,” he said to the scientist, who gave him a look.

“Would you have accepted if we had told you _everything_ , Jazz?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I would have,” the Cyberninja shrugged. “Because I care for those mechlings, you know? And for SP, even if he sometimes acts like a jerk –”

“Hey!”

“—and OP and his team are cool Cybercats, you know? So additional forewarning we wouldn’t be coming back on Cybertron _anytime soon_ might have been nice to know just so, oh, I don’t know, I could have bough additional, needed material if anything?”

“There is a dropship in route for your location,” Perceptor stated. “You have no worry to have.”

“Say you,” Jazz pointed out gruffly. Allspark, he hated playing the fool. Had happened too often already in the Great War and he had hoped it wouldn’t happen again but eh, it was Percy; he should have known he was expendable to him. He hadn’t been to Ultra Magnus, but Rodimus didn’t known him that well, so… 

“Agent Jazz…” Perceptor started, but Jazz shook his head.

“You know what, mech? Right now, I don’t care. I’m angry, Ratchet is angry, Optimus is _furious_ , Sentinel is potentially in shock or may some crossed wires, who knows, and we got a fragged-up situation to explain to three mechs and a protoform equivalent _before_ they do something that’ll rouse the Twins’ temper. I’m not having a discussion on duty and orders with you _now_.”

“Telling the other members of this team would skew the data…”

“See me not care; you’ll have data aplenty anyway,” Jazz stated flatly. “Jazz out – and do not recall before tomorrow _at the very least_ , or I’m shooting the comm unit,” he warned, reaching for a button and cutting the conversation short.

Turning, he gave the other mechs present a strained grin. “Alright, do you have a place where we can blow some steam without endangering the locals? ‘Cause I sorely need it right now, and I think I’m not the only one…”

*-*-*-*-*

**Epilogue (Of Sort)**

Well, that had been a waste of her time.

Not that Slipstream had expected otherwise, of course; her attempt had been far-fetched to begin with, she readily acknowledged as she entered her makeshift lab, holding a tray full of test tubes and beakers.

Honestly, the two flying Autobots had spent too much time already with a specific set of people to not have already imprinted on one or two potential trinemates already. Slipstream was a clone, true, but she was a clone of _Starscream_ , and her progenitor had left her with a good share of his memory banks – including all sort of interesting tidbits about Trines and their formations.

Starscream had been a fool to dismiss such potential, Slipstream thought as she put the tray down on a nearby table and went to disinfect her hands.

Oh, she understood why he hadn’t wanted to be _tied down_ and _intimate_ with any mech, but when weighted against the pro of having _two loyal subordinates_ , she herself considered that a few rounds of interfacing were a small price to pay.

Especially when the two mechs she’d be tied down to were kinda cute. Young, a bit too enthusiastic, with terrible humor, wingless for all their ability to fly, but kinda cute.

That said, the chances Slipstream would have been able to, well, ‘slip herself in’ as another probable contestant for the empty spot between them had been less than 2%. But that had been worth a try, if only to make sure she hadn’t missed an opportunity.

That, and she had contingency plans hinging on successfully grabbing the one mech they had settled on as their trinemate.

It hadn’t taken her very long to realize that it was too late and that the flying Twins had _chosen_ already. She had just needed to watch their interactions with the rest of the Autobots for a few days to be certain. Their settling on the blowhard Prime with the terrible luck had almost left her floundered, because seriously?

She could only wonder about the flying Twins’ tastes. True, their chosen Trinemate had some nice plating from the shoulders down; Slipstream wasn’t a big fan of broad shoulders, but the waist and aft of the Prime were nice to look at, she had to admit.

But the chin was a turn off, and so was his personality.

Really, the backstabbing tendencies asides, the mech reminded Slipstream far too much of Starscream…  
…

And that made an awful lot of sense, when one thought about it.

The two flying Autobots weren’t clones like her, although they shared some common coding (okay, more than some; they shared _a lot_ ). But whatever the Autobots had extracted from Starscream to create the pair, it hadn’t included much in term of personality traits. That said, Starscream oh-so-charming ego was bound to have left a mark in their systems, no matter how much the responsible of the Twins’ creations had tried to purge. If the Twins weren’t manifesting any themselves, then maybe it was only normal they were _attracted_ to a mech who had so much in common with Starscream’s base traits, recognizing the familiarity and craving it as part of their personal development.

But that was just a theory.

Maybe they were just attracted to a nice-enough aft to pound and a big mouth that could suck them off.

Slipstream didn’t care about the reasoning; all she could see was… potential. So much _potential_!

She couldn’t claim the flying Autobots as Trine anymore and waylaid them to her side, sure. Loyalty issues would make it unlikely they’d ever shift side, unless their trinemate decided to and they followed suit. But the Prime with the big chin… this Sentinel Prime… the fact they had chosen him was _interesting_. Especially if, as she suspected, they had chosen him for compatibility’s sake.

So, Slipstream had backed down, went back to base and started to plot accordingly.

It had taken her a handful of Earth day and two raids on facilities on foreign soils as to not alert the Autobots in Detroit, but Slipstream had easily gathered all the material she needed. Starscream had gifted her with what she considered his most _useful_ traits: his scientific accuracy and curiosity. She could cobble up a lab better than her original template could ever hope to – and she had no compulsion against modifying her own frame to gather the raw material she wanted for her research.

It was surprising that Starscream had created his clones with working interface arrays, considering his own conflicted feeling about interfacing, but Slipstream saw no reason to complain.

Not when she knew how to disactivate her Forge mechanisms in order to modify her Carrying chamber into a simple, inactive tank.

From there, she had sent her plot rolling.

Snatching the Prime had been ridiculously easy; seducing him and tempting him into interfacing had been even easier. The Autobot was so much like Starscream, she had found which buttons to push without any efforts. Granted, the interfacing hadn’t been anything stellar, Slipstream mused as she picked two full test tubes and carried them over. The Prime wasn’t as skilled as he pretended to be, and the size difference between them hadn’t helped matters.

Good thing she hadn’t been after an overload for herself; the only thing she had needed was one from the Prime – his overload, and the transfluid he’d release when reaching his peak. And that, of course, had been more than easier to get.

The unsatisfied itch between her legs and the feeling the liquid sloshing into her inactive, modified chamber had been unnerving, but she had bore it with gritted dental plates until the flying Autobots had found them and she had been able to leave under the cover of flying their wrath while they obeyed their base coding and ::Reclaimed:: their errant Trinemate – who they had never properly claimed before, despite having settled on him for a while now.

Curious. Perhaps their instincts were duller than Slipstream had first thought. Then again, given how quickly they had lost interest in her to concentrate on the bound and gagged and _ready to be taken Prime_ , perhaps not. It might have just been a bit of slow-kicking. Or a myriad of other reasons Slipstream couldn’t fathom due to the two flyers’ mixed coding.

She wasn’t going to complain, though. She had taken a big risk already, molesting their trinemate in front of them. Older, more experienced Seekers could have chosen to rip her apart for the offense; Starscream’s memories were riff with examples that made her pause in uneasy contemplation.

Uh.

Good thing her calculated risks had paid off, the purple and teal femme shook her head, using a pipette to take some of the liquid – some of the _transfluid_ \-- inside one of the test tubes, carefully putting a drop under the lens of her microscope.

She was free, no one was suspecting her ultimate plans and better than all, she now had a fresh stock of _Autobot CNA_ at her disposition.

Emptying the chamber had been a drawn-out, uncomfortable process, involving tubing and a pump and a lot of uncomfortable squirming, but it was worth it. Or at least, it would be worth it once she was done, Slipstream amended.

The thing was, it wasn’t easy to strike out on her own wasn’t as easy as Slipstream had hoped. The Autobots were a problem, sure, but so were a few humans who were a little too interested in Cybertronian technology – and then you had the Decepticons still present on the planet, those created by the Allspark fragments. Dirt Boss, Soundwave, stupid _Stretch_ …!

Slipstream considered herself as good, but she wasn’t blind either. All alone, she was already hard pressed to face them. If they kept expending their own gangs of minions, she was fragged. So far, she had had no luck getting her hands on one of the remaining Allspark shards, most of which had already been swept up by Autobots. It made her regret that her fellow Clones had been sucked in that spacebridge or captured and that she was the only one left on Earth. Sure, they had plenty of issues, thanks to Starscream _hilariously_ botching up the cloning process, but safety in number and all that jazz, yes?

But her fellow Clones, her almost-brothers were out of reach, leaving her in a bind, and Starscream had resolved herself to be on the losing side…

Until she had found the remains of a crashed Cybertronian ship, that’s it – and more than that, the **protoforms** abandoned inside.

How they had ended on Earth, Slipstream had no idea. Maybe it had been one of the evacuation shuttles from the _Nemesis_ ; there had been several drones on board in complement of Megatron and his heavy hitters. One of them might have tried to escape with a couple of protoforms when it had crashed on Earth’s Moon, or perhaps earlier than that. The drone had not survived the crash, but most of the protorforms had held up nicely. There was five of them in peak condition, ready to be used, and two damaged ones for which Slipstream still had hopes.

Seven potential allies, if she could put them to good use and create more Clones using herself as their template.

Which was where her plans had gotten stalled because…

Slipstream was already a Clone, as grating as it was.

Her coding was already a copy, and when you made copy of a copy… it was always, always inferior quality. The Decepticons and Starscream had experienced with it aplenty during the Great War, in an attempt to bolster their forces. Suffice to say, it hadn’t exactly gone as planned, and the soldiers produced through the process had been little more than cannon fodder, if that. Asides of one mech called Misfire, who had gained a reputation, but not exactly a kind one – it was all in his name.

If Slipstream attempted to clone herself, the chances she’d end up with total, useless dim-wits as the ultimate results were quite high and while she wanted underlings, she wasn’t _that_ desperate yet.

That left her with limited options. 

On one hand, she could clone the Autobot team; it wouldn’t be that hard, she reasoned. Starscream had helped through Project: Doppelgänger and the creation of Magnificus, the clone of Perceptor, and Slipstream had retained enough contact with the Decepticon gossip channels to know something similar had been attempted on several Primes’ shells. 

It was, however, a lengthy process, and one with several drawbacks, chief among which was getting a CNA or RNA sample from each team member without them noticing and realizing what she might intend with it. 

Atop of it… they were all grounders, and while Slipstream knew she needed a team, any team, what she wanted were _other flyers_ , _aerial support_ , _wingmates_. 

And to get them, she could only use her own, uncomplete coding. 

Unless she tweaked things around, of course – and mixed up her own coding strands with those of the Autobots, hoping for the best. Technically, she could have used any Autobot CAN for that process; she had originally planned to use Optimus Prime’s, as he was the strongest fighter on Earth, and his use of a jetpack showed he had some natural instincts when it came to flying. 

Not ideal, but palatable and potentially interesting. 

Slipstream had been settling on the idea when the Elite Guard ship had broke atmosphere and she had realized what sort of boon was now in her reach. 

Forget the Earth-bound Autobots; those Elite Guard mechs, and this Sentinel Prime, were all far more interesting. 

At first, Slipstream had thought about stealing some CNA from the two flying Autobots, only to hesitate, then dismiss the idea. Their own coding was already mixed, and still full of potential mutations not yet revealed. Attempting to clone _that_ was bound to be dangerous, if not completely ineffective. 

The Cyberninja had had potential, but this one was a wary sort, not the kind she would be able to fool for long. 

That left the new Prime. 

The flying Autobots’ trinemate. 

The mech who had so much personality traits in common with Starscream, one had to make a double-take and wonder if perhaps the Autobots hadn’t been in the cloning business too in the past… or if perhaps, a certain former Decepticon hadn’t fooled around in the past. 

Slipstream had no proof, of course, but… 

There were a few interesting tidbits about Trines formations lurking in her memories. One of them concerned the choice of _grounder partners_. It was rare and often scoffed at, but it had existed, back when Vos had been at the summum of its glory. Back then, there had been plenty of grounders in the city, manning and maintaining the lower levels of the spires. Sometimes, there were dalliances between them and a Seeker (or a whole Trine). 

And sometimes, back before strict population control had been instituted and the Allspark became the only allowed method of bringing forth new Cybertronians, those dalliances had resulted in offspring, _Sparklings_ with mixed coding, usually taking after their ground-based parent but with _just enough_ of Seeker coding to make them Trine-compatible despite their own lack of flying ability. 

If one knew that, then the flying Autobots’ choice of Sentinel Prime for their Trine became even more fascinating. After all, what were the odds that the blowhard who had been Ultra Magnus’ second actually had _flyer coding_? 

The answer was, quite good. 

She had been right, after all. 

Slipstream smirked to herself as she examined the nanites in the transfluid sample under her microscope, watching them twist and dash to each other. The similarity to her owns nanites was striking, especially in contrast with the pure Autobots nanites she had had the misfortune to examinate before. 

It wasn’t a perfect match by any stretch, but she hadn’t expected it to be. By timeline alone, if one did a quick calculation of Sentinel Prime’s probable age coupled with the time of Vos’ officially rallying to Megatron and the time the last Seekers left Cybertron in exile… the Prime could only have a Seeker _Grandsire_ , if not a _Great-Grandsire_. Not enough to ever get the ability to fly himself or for him to have most of the instincts that came with a flyer frame, but this little trace of _Seeker_ in his coding had been sniffed out by the two flying Autobots, and it had been enough to qualify him as Trinemate despite the odds. 

Oh, to be a nanofly on the wall when the Autobot’s Ministry of Sciences would figure that out! Or better, when the arrogant, big-chined Prime would be told! Would be a shock for him, to learn he was not the fully pure Autobot he prided himself as. 

Granted, Slipstream hummed to herself, Sentinel Prime would hardly be an unique case. Autobots just tended to keep it under wraps and refused to publicly acknowledge mixed heritages, but it was there for all to see if you dug a little. Anyone who had a ‘natural’ lineage and didn’t came straight out of the Allspark could potentially have a few strands of warframe coding. Slipstream couldn’t be sure without in-depth analysis, but she wouldn’t have been surprised if Optimus Prime and the big guy on his team had it. And there were others; Sentinel Prime. Ultra Magnus himself… 

Eh. Hypocrites, all of them. 

But that wasn’t her problem. All that mattered was, she had been right and Sentinel Prime had _some_ Seeker compatible coding. 

This was good. Really good, even. 

She could make a clone using only her own CNA for fear of degenerating coding. But if she made a clone using her CNA **and** the Prime’s to fill the blanks and repair the damaged sections… Then she could success. Not only that, but if there was still flyer code programmed in those nanites, then when combined with her own CNA, Slipstream was fairly certain that the end results would be flight-able. 

She would be able to get her own wingmates, her own ::Trinemates:: -- and if she was lucky enough, she could make sure they emerged as Femmes as well. She had always preferred the sleek, feminine aesthetic herself; mechs were too boxy most of the time, even among Seekers. 

She could see it already; herself, standing between two other beautiful, deadly frames, all smirks and seduction, sharp talons and high thruster heels, large wings and sleek bodies. And behind them, their loyal minions, a team cloned from the Autobot Repair Team, with hopefully enough knowledge left from their templates to create Space Bridges of their own. 

The first step toward building her own Empire, free from the shadow of Starscream, from Megatron, from _everyone_. 

What a glorious vision. 

Leaning back, she rubbed her hands gleefully. 

It was going to be a long work, but for a Trine of her own, tailored to her specifications? 

It was definitely worth the trouble. 

__

**End**


End file.
